EA aligns IT and business innovation

Forrester Research believes enterprise architects play a key role as coordinators and facilitators for a company`s innovation initiatives, reports CIO.

The architects are the people within the IT organisation who are best suited for the mission, says Forrester analyst Alex Cullen, because they have an overall view of the company and are plugged into business strategy. And because they are technology generalists, they are better at seeing - and dealing with - new things than more specialised IT managers.

The enterprise architecture group`s role is mainly as a facilitator: to build an innovation team, says Cullen. Participants in this so-called innovation network should come from all over the company and include both business and IT people. The team`s role is to behave as a funnel, channelling ideas from a variety of sources, including technical publications, other companies, academia or the consumer market.

What is the best way to communicate the benefits of enterprise architecture (EA) to senior executives? First, do not use technical jargon. That was what a panel of federal chief architects advised colleagues at FCW Events` recent EA Conference and Exhibition in Washington, DC.

"We`re trying to push EA from a business perspective," said Marlene Howze, chief architect at US`s labour department. The worst thing to do in selling enterprise architecture is talk about it in technical terms, she said.

Howze, who created an EA programme office at the department, said her first challenge was gaining support from the department`s CIO.

HP, as part of a $500 million push to deliver service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology to enterprise customers, has opened three SOA centres, ZDNet Asia reports.

Located in California, Singapore and Bangalore, India, the HP SOA Competency Centers allow HP customers and partners to pilot and evaluate SOA technology. The centres also showcase HP`s capabilities in IT architecture, management, security and governance, according to the vendor.

Market researcher Gartner says, at least 65% of large enterprise organisations will have more than 35% of their application portfolios SOA-based by 2010, up from fewer than 5% of organisations in 2005, the article reports.