The Importance Of Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture is an organizational practice of analyzing, planning, designing and the implementation of enterprise solutions. Enterprise Architecture brings together the functions of information, business and application architects as well as the infrastructure specialization. Rationalization is the first basis for enterprise architecture. Rationalization process involves system consolidation to improve efficiency through cost-cutting. At Dell, there are five processes which are in relation to the enterprise architecture. These are outlined as Developing, marketing, selling, fulfilling and supporting. Each of the five processes is integrated with information technology. This is done to ensure the development of systems which are effective

The ability of a reference architecture to provide guidance so that future developers understand how to program future applications in a domain is a primary motivation for the generation of a reference architecture. The guidance provided by a reference architecture can reduce development costs.

Another primary benefit of a reference architecture is to provide an understanding of the components of the architecture. This understanding allows users and developers to comprehend the implications of the architecture at a high level and also provides an understanding of the components that make up the architecture and the relationships between the components. A user community that desires to interchange components and to interoperate with systems requires such an understanding of the components. And therefore is a strong motivating force for the generation of reference architectures.

Since a reference architecture provides an understanding of a set of systems developed for a domain by generalizing and abstracting components and their inter-relationships, the creation of a reference architecture provides potential customers with a common perspective and principled basis for comparison of