Viewing and Communicating Information Infrastructures

In 1987, John Zachman, wrote: “To keep the business from disintegrating, the concept of information systems architecture is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity.” From then on, the EA Framework of Zachman has evolved and became the model around which many major organizations view and communicate their enterprise information infrastructure. It provides a blueprint, or architecture, for the organization’s current and future information infrastructure.

Zachman's EA at the time presented a new model for viewing and communicating information infrastructures.

Instead of representing the process as a series of steps, he organized it around the points of view (perspectives) taken by the various players. These players included:

1. Someone who has undertaken to do business in a particular industry
2. The business people who run the organization
3. The systems analyst who wants to represent the business in a disciplined form
4. The designer, who applies specific technologies to solve the problems of the business
5. The builder of the system, and finally
6. The system itself.

These perspectives are represented as rows in the matrix.

Zachman also acknowledged that each of the participants was looking at the same categories of information. The columns in the framework represent the data manipulated by an organization (what), its functions and processes (how), locations where business is conducted (where), events that trigger business activities (when), the people and organizations involved (who), and the motivations and constraints which determine how the business behaves (why).
 

EA Terminology

• An “Enterprise” is a business association consisting of a recognized set of interacting business functions, able to operate as an independent, standalone entity. With this definition, there can be enterprises within enterprises. For instance, a business unit within the overall corporate entity may be considered an enterprise as long as it could be operated independently. The enterprise can also be seen as the “extended” enterprise, meaning that the scope of the impact of an enterprise architecture effort could also include inter-relationships to external entities such as suppliers, business partners, and customers.
• “Architecture” provides the underlying framework, which defines and describes the platform required by the enterprise to attain its objectives and achieve its business vision. It can be defined as the set of principles, guidelines, policies, models, standards, and processes that, aligned to business strategy and information requirements, guides the selection, creation and implementation of solutions that are aligned with future business direction.
   

Compare with Zachman's Enterprise Architecture: Balanced Scorecard  |  Activity Based Costing  |  Modeling

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