The ultimate goal of enterprise architecture

In the Vlerick Corporate Partnership Magazine of September 11' I was
surprised to read the following :

"The ultimate goal of Enterprise Architecture is to implement a
business strategy with an IT roadmap" Joachim Vanden Brande, Loqutus.

With all respect I have to Joachim (I know him a little bit) I
disagree with that statement : Entreprise Architecture is about the
Entreprise, not about IT. Otherwise it's called IT architecture.

To me EA is also applicable to companies which have no IT. All
enterprises have an architecture regardless of the use of IT.
Enterprises of the middle ages had an enterprise architecture.

The mix between IT and Enterprise Architecture has 2 main causes:
- IT has methods and techniques that strongly connect with the
enterprise. IT has user repositories, IT knows about all locations to
protect them with access control (badges), IT knows about the customers
via CRM, IT knows about suppliers via EDI...

- IT has become an important and sometimes central element of the
enterprise architecture. For example, there are few banks who could
operate without computers (but banks existed before computers, right...)

The ultimate goal of Entreprise Architecture is to help the enterprise
to better know itself in order to define the right strategy to achieve
its goals.

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Jean-Francois Declercq
http://www.appe.biz/contact
+32 486 744 520