Enterprise Architectures

Enterprise Architecture (EA) focuses on the business process and provides a framework to understand what processes are in place, and what needs to be accomplished, and how business objectives should be achieved. The frameworks support and align organizational strategies to business processes to achieve success, and is done through documentation. This is a critical activity in corporate governance.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is a business centric framework, and it is most widely used in many organizations. “The Open Group states that TOGAF is intended to ensure everyone speaks the same language, avoid lock-in to proprietary solutions by standardizing on open mentors for enterprise architecture, save time and money, and utilize resources more effectively, achieve demonstrable ROI” (White, 2018). TOGAF has four pillars that can support this framework: business, applications, data and technical (technology) architecture — these four pillars provide flexibility to an organization that wants to implement this framework and is created by following the Architecture Development Method (ADM). TOGAF uses enterprise continuum & tools, which includes architecture partitioning and the architecture repository. TOGAF also provides reference models, and the architecture capability framework which can help an organization increase business capability. This framework is flexible and can be customized to the organization’s needs in order to achieve success.

The NATO Architecture Framework (NAF) is a framework used mostly in a military setting. “The application of the NAF is designed to enable architectures to contribute most effectively to acquiring and fielding cost-effective and interoperable military capabilities… the architecture is responsible for defining how resources will be used to support enterprise strategy and benefit the NATO goals and objectives” (Visual Paradigm, n.d.). NAF uses methodology and lifecycle models to show that some processes require repetition in order to achieve architecture goals. An architecture dashboard is used to collect data to assess the success of activities and is used to make decisions to improve or stop certain activities.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) consists of diagrams which were structured for software developers. These diagrams help an organization to analyze their system from a different perspective. UML provides 14 diagrams and is split into two types — structure diagrams which shows static structure of a system involving real world and implementation concepts and behavior diagrams which refers to dynamic behavior within an organizational activity. According to Conaway and Page-Jones (Visual Paradigm, n.d.), the primary goal of UML is to:

1. Provide users with a ready-to-use, expressive visual modeling language so they can develop and exchange meaningful models.
2. Provide extensibility and specialization mechanisms to extend the core concepts.
3. Be independent of particular programming languages and development processes.
4. Provide a formal basis for understanding the modeling language.
5. Encourage the growth of the OO tools market.
6. Support higher-level development concepts such as collaborations, frameworks, patterns and components.
7. Integrate best practices.

This framework will support businesses to support the needs of managing activities, automation of activities to increase efficiency while reducing costs.

Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture (SABSA) is an open source framework which focuses on implementation of security and risk management into IT processes. According to SABSA Institute (2018), following frameworks have been complied to support the organization:

• Business Requirements Engineering Framework (known as Attributes Profiling)
• Risk and Opportunity Management Framework
• Policy Architecture Framework
• Security Services-Oriented Architecture Framework
• Governance Framework
• Security Domain Framework
• Through-life Security Service Management & Performance Management Framework

SABSA is also known to seamlessly align with other frameworks such as TOGAF, Zachman Framework and ITIL. This framework can be fully customized to an organization by assessing business processes and making an assessment using structures provided. SABSA using integration of strategies in relation to information security will support an organization achieve success.

Lastly, The Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) was developed for implementation for the U.S. Federal government. FEAF focuses on the current and future state of the agency, “and lays out a plan for transitioning from the current state to the desired future state. A federal enterprise architecture is a work in progress to achieve these goals” (Wikipedia, 2020). FEAF provides the Consolidated Reference Model (CRM) which defines strategy, business, data, applications, infrastructure and security is set as the core of this framework. FEAF also provides the business reference model (BRM), technical reference model (TRM) , data reference model (DRM) and the performance reference model (PRM); these models help define the different processes of the government, standard ways of describing data and deliverables, and helps categorize the different technologies and standards (Tupper, 2011).

SABSA framework would be my choice over others because of its key focus on security and risk management. Integration of security into the organizational strategies and requirements will support in the development of business activities to be more secure and protected. SABSA framework is also designed to seamlessly align with other frameworks such as TOGAF and ITIL, with added security. The flexibility of this framework will allow customization to fully align with the organizational needs and demands in order to achieve business goals and to be successful.