Principal Analyst Mike Thompson at research firm Ovum has been around the enterprise architecture space long enough to know that all too often EA is a “nice to have” concept exercise rather than a practical effort that delivers business results.
EA can present a holistic view of the business, information, application and technology architectures within an organization, says Thompson. But it cannot in and of itself achieve the holy grail of aligning IT with the business. True business benefits, he says, only come when organizations put EA concepts to work through the use of specific applications. Those applications must equip business leaders and CIOs with accurate, real-time information to drive their business transformation decisions.
That’s what we, at Troux, call Business Technology Management (BTM). BTM is the unification of decision making across business and technology. It moves beyond looking at EA as a standalone effort to making EA the strategic foundation of the larger enterprise business/technology decision making process. In the Troux 9 suite for example, Troux Optimization tackles the business challenge of rationalizing applications to reduce cost and risk. Our Troux Standards also helps reduce costs as well as regulatory and security risks by enforcing technology and process standards. This structured approach is a far cry from the chaos, cost and inconsistent results you get from trying to create an enterprise architecture practice through ad-hoc efforts or by using Excel, Visio or PowerPoint.
Second, says Thompson, BTM uses EA applications to manage the all-important portfolio of information that describes the IT architecture as well as the business processes the architecture supports. This ranges from making sure the information is current and complete, to using that information to manage the IT portfolio in such a way that reduces risk and cost while increasing agility.
Third, BTM (through the use of applications such as Troux Alignment) creates greater tie-in between IT and the rest of the organization by describing the relationships and dependencies between the organization’s business and IT portfolios. Understanding which specific business capabilities depend on which applications, databases and middleware helps prevent the useless “blame games” where users complain that IT doesn’t deliver the features and functions they need, and IT complains back that the business users never explained what they wanted. It also enables the ongoing management of an organization’s portfolio of applications and technology, allowing the business to move beyond a one-time application rationalization effort to the ongoing pruning and acquisition of new technologies as business needs change.
Overall, BTM can provide “a really deep dive into what is going on within the organization,” says Thompson. But to achieve these goals, organizations must use applications that ensure the information provided to EA systems and practitioners is valid. Those applications must also put the project and portfolio information into a business context, showing how each relates not only to the IT architecture, but to the needs of the business. Without this business context, an organization’s list of projects, programs and portfolios becomes a hierarchical management structure that is of little use because it provides no understanding of how these elements relate to the needs of the business.
We like Mike’s thinking because it helps move EA from a hazy concept to a business imperative. That’s just where it should be at a time when no organization can afford to waste time or money on IT or business initiatives that don’t quickly deliver rapid value.
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