Can you imagine a company that has no understanding of what it has to work with or how it will achieve critical objectives? Sounds strange, right? However, because there aren’t enough trained individuals who can comprehend and connect business goals with a technology strategy and architecture capable of supporting current demands, this is quite likely to happen. This introduces us to Enterprise Architecture, a critical topic that most corporations regard as a solution.

Because the majority of university educational programs are not in conjunction with Business Informatics, which is an integral requirement for today’s digital organizations, engineering graduates and post-graduates usually gain a cursory knowledge of Information Technologies and Information Systems during their curriculum. Professionals with in-depth expertise in both technical and business areas are in high demand. They must not only successfully manage product development, but also understand the business environment and endeavor to improve the business function by aligning IT with business drivers. This is why the Enterprise Architect’s function is becoming increasingly important to the business and serves as a stabilizing force in a turbulent environment.

Before we move on, let’s conduct some research and learn about Enterprise Architecture. It is the process through which businesses standardize and manage their IT infrastructure to meet their business objectives. These plans promote digital transformation, IT expansion, and IT department modernization.

Given the importance of Enterprise Architecture in satisfying business demands, educational institutions that want to stay competitive in their offerings must make major changes to their IT curriculum. They must include Enterprise Architecture courseware, which is required for engineers and assists them in gaining an integrated understanding of architecture and engineering. Developing this unique set of talents can boost your career by making you extremely niche-skilled and marketable, especially in today’s digital enterprises.

Professionals who can save time and money while also improving the business function by aligning IT with business drivers are needed in digital businesses.

To address these issues, we established The Open Group INITIATE (India Academic Initiative in Architecture) Work Group, which is dedicated to integrating Enterprise Architecture as a field for Indian academic institutions. It exposes students to Enterprise Architecture ideas and demonstrates how engineering perspectives may be combined with Enterprise Architecture requirements. The TOGAF® Standard, IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, and the ArchiMate® Modelling language and methodology are among the global and corporate standards covered in the course. The learning process is supported by the effective tasks included in this software. They focus on how Enterprise Architecture can help businesses support business development and transformation, as well as build and maintain their own architecture practice. This discipline teaches strategy-making abilities as well as a grasp of how plans may be successfully implemented, as well as aligning company demands with technological advancements and the whole organization.

Let’s look at how the standards and frameworks discussed in this curriculum might help you develop Enterprise architecture abilities.

The TOGAF Standard is an outstanding framework that stands head and shoulders above the others. In fact, it is used to create the architectures of 80% of Global 50 corporations and 60% of Fortune 500 organizations. The TOGAF framework serves as an encyclopedia for learning about architectural ideas and principles for designing, planning, executing, and regulating enterprise IT architecture. Learning TOGAF can help you bridge the gap between being a techie and how architects try to understand and deliver business results as professionals.

The IT4IT Standard provides a comprehensive architecture for standardizing the digital automation fabric in order to allow continued innovation and faster delivery of digital services. This standard establishes a framework for developing a Digital Operating Model that includes the value streams, capabilities, and data flow required to manage the whole Digital Product lifecycle. You will be able to detect and manage the aspects that are lacking in managing the digital lifecycle and may cause a risk to the organization if you have IT4IT abilities. You’ll also be able to foresee how specific changes would affect the digital infrastructure overall, allowing you to make more informed decisions.

Now let’s talk about the ArchiMate modeling language, which is also included in this package and will make Enterprise Architecture principles much easier to grasp. The ArchiMate modeling language aids in the mapping out of corporate architectural structures and the creation of a simple map displaying the many parts of a company. You would be able to explain the principles and connections that govern modern enterprises using ArchiMate expertise.

Time to get started

Enterprise architecture is important in today’s fast-paced technology environment and highly competitive corporate environment. This necessitates the upgrading of educational institutes and universities’ course curricula to incorporate Enterprise Architecture as a subject. Enterprise architects have a broad technical background and typically begin with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, which gives a strong foundation in the fundamentals. You’ve already started down this path! Now is the moment to accelerate your progress through this program and seize the chance to assist organizations in navigating the shifting seas of today’s technology as an Enterprise Architect.

Satya works as a Product Manager at HCL Technologies and is responsible for architecting, designing, and developing the HCL DRYiCE Orchestration Product and Service. Satya made substantial use of the IT4IT™ Standard in building HCL’s XaaS Service Management platform, solutions, and services for HCL and its business clients. He is an ITSM expert with over 21 years of experience in the IT field.

Satya has been a member of The Open Group IT4IT Forum’s Steering Committee, IT4IT Core Standard committee, and The Open Group Governing Board IT4IT Adoption workgroup for more than four years as an elected officer and member of the IT4IT Forum Steering Committee, IT4IT Core Standard committee, and The Open Group Governing Board IT4IT Adoption workgroup He has a case study published in The Open Group library, and he is now leading the Deliver Function chapter in Version 3.0 of the IT4IT™ Reference Architecture Standard, with major contributions to the IT4IT™ Release and Consume value streams.

Many individuals in the technology field would struggle to find someone who does not see the value of a standard. We live in a world of various systems, each with its own design decisions and applications — frequently even within the same organization, much alone across enterprises. In this perspective, standards are what allow technology to accomplish practically everything we want it to do, such as properly transmitting a message from one computer to another or being understandable to a newly recruited engineer.

Standards are amazing engines of invention, in addition to their direct pragmatic roles. They imply that a company may develop and market a new product with the confidence that customers will be able to integrate it with their existing products. At the same time, they may spark new ideas: if a method is defined and detailed in a standard, it’s easy to envisage what else might be accomplished using that method.

When standards stumble

In summary, everyone likes standards – until they no longer serve our requirements.

For more than twenty-five years, The Open Group has been setting industry standards. We’ve gone through the same changes as every other company over the last quarter-century, starting in 1995, when the Internet was just beginning to be utilized commercially. Our working groups have convened in person, over the phone, and via video conferencing. Our members have worked together using a variety of tools, including whiteboards, email, and shared online documents.

We’ve depended on a variety of standards along the road, some open, like email, and others closed. The difficulty with a standard like an email is that it might be difficult to maintain it up to date with the demands of those who use it. Of course, we still need it to send billions of messages every day, but the original email transfer protocol, for example, does not enable attachments. As a result, the industry developed a new standard that builds on the original to allow attachments to be sent.

As a result, standards build throughout time to meet the numerous additional functionalities that we demand. This is a process that has been accelerating since the early days of the Internet, with new tools, frameworks, platforms, and services emerging at an ever-increasing rate as critical components of the digital industry.

What applies to communication protocols also applies to all types of standards. The Open Group, for example, was founded to promote a common standard for UNIX® implementation and has since gone on to develop the world’s most widely used enterprise architecture methodology and framework, as well as open standards for everything from interoperable healthcare systems to the recording and processing of environmental footprint data.

This work is important to many aspects of the modern digital industry, as well as our daily life. As such businesses combine their business and technical capabilities into product-centric agile delivery teams, they can no longer rely on a few standards to address their problems. The capacity to keep up with the rapid speed of change in the ever-evolving tools and frameworks is a necessary talent for staying competitive. How can businesses better embrace and maintain standards in light of this competitive imperative?

A modular future for standards

We also know that taking a different method will not mean abandoning the notion of having standards and the benefit they give. It’s common knowledge that a large percentage of digital transformation projects fail, and the root cause is often that, while empowering smaller teams to act more quickly in a digitally native manner, organizations fail to change their business model, organization, management, and culture to ensure that those empowered teams can work together.

By altering the way businesses function, standards development may assist companies in making key business transformations. The agile approach itself, naturally, provides inspiration on how to achieve this. When the technique is implemented correctly, numerous agile teams inside an organization will generate modular components that add up to something far more than the sum of their parts. Businesses should strive to embrace standards that provide the same level of quality: modular, organized, composable elements that, when integrated, provide value rather than conflict. The method for developing those standards should be flexible enough to change in line with the underlying business and technological forces. The procedure should also be set up to allow for speedy learning from market input. If standards can’t adapt and grow quickly enough, they’ll quickly become obsolete for product teams looking for answers to their difficulties.

Standards in the future will be modular, with components that can be evaluated and modified more quickly to stay up with the world around them.

While rigorous design and consensus will always be important in the development of standards, the industry must move away from the practice of developing huge, monolithic standards that grow slowly. Standards development must “enable work in tiny batches, ideally single-piece flow, gaining immediate and continuous feedback on our work,” to borrow from the agile world once more. Large, slow-evolving standards, in other words, represent a type of technical debt for the standards business.

We must consider customer standards in addition to the development process. A modular future for standards will be one in which standards-based solutions, regardless of whose standard they belong to, are easy to identify and traverse.

Standards thrive in the end when they enable individuals to easily find and implement answers to their business concerns. Businesses will require standards that function the way they work in today’s fast-changing world.

By Andras R. Szakal, CTO, The Open Group

Last year, the Open Group celebrated its 25th anniversary, and over that time, it has played an important role in shaping and sustaining the technological web that we now navigate on a daily basis. This vendor-neutral technology consortium is now so important that it seems like an oak tree: robust, dependable, and part of the landscape. Its contributions range from standardizing UNIX to establishing the world’s most commonly used Enterprise Architecture framework.

But, like an oak tree, The Open Group has survived by continuing to develop in new ways, rather than rejecting change. A quarter-century is a long period, especially when technology and society advance at the rate they do today, and The Open Group has triggered and adapted to many commercial and technological trends throughout that time.

Today, there is a slew of trends on the horizon that will not only change certain industries or ways of doing business but will also change the way major segments of the economy operate. Emerging technologies like quantum computing and robots are joining business imperatives like supply chain transformation and climate action to create a difficult collection of megatrends to manage in the coming years.

Understanding Megatrends

The potential energy embodied by these megatrends is amplified, of course, by the fact that we are recovering from possibly the most dramatic and wide-ranging global change in recent memory. Although much has been written about the pandemic’s effects, it is worth noting that many of the measures we utilized to limit its effects – from remote working to quick vaccine and medicines research – would not have been conceivable even five years ago.

Many assumptions were shattered, and many patterns were altered, maybe permanently, as a result of the disturbance. When we look at workforce changes, for example, we see that the ‘great resignation’ of people changing careers during the pandemic represents more than just aimless churn, but a clear shift away from jobs that require more basic human interaction, such as hospitality, and toward areas that are looking to digitally transform. Furthermore, these career changes frequently describe the nature of the work as their primary motivator, rather than their capacity to find work.

This tendency has been helped by the fact that, as a result of the pandemic’s driving impact, a greater amount of labor may now be done remotely. Skills can frequently be matched to company demands regardless of region, thanks to a suite of tools that organizations have employed over the last decade. Indeed, many businesses are reconsidering what kind of work is genuinely required of local residents.

The story is shaped by a number of megatrends, including the ongoing evolution of SaaS to offer new, more powerful services; working from home maturing from a temporary strategy to a permanent strategy; and, as career preferences shift, the opportunity for robotics and automation to fill gaps in the human workforce. That is to say, this recent example demonstrates how business and technological megatrends should be seen as separate entities.

Navigating the Megatrend

In a world where customers are becoming increasingly concerned about how their data is utilized, we might create a similar tale about how quantum computing will interact with security and privacy. Or how augmented reality will help to break through geographical barriers in sectors like online education. Or consider how artificial intelligence is being used to both assess and cut emissions in the quest to tackle climate change.

The challenge is how we should prepare to handle trends that will have a substantial impact on the human condition – especially considering the connectedness of these trends.

We believe the answer is found in technological architecture. Because they are cross-sectoral in nature, these megatrends will bring sectors of life into contact with one another that have never been required to share information or processes before. We will discover that systems as diverse as healthcare, supply chain logistics, and AI development will suddenly need to communicate effectively and reliably as a result of this cycle of business demands and technological advances igniting one another across vast areas of the economy.

Without a comprehensive architecture to govern that communication, the final consequence would be chaos; many firms are still trying to pay off technological debt incurred as a result of inadequate overnight modifications to working procedures in response to the pandemic.

When we think about technology architecture, we typically think of it only in terms of IT, of how systems may be supplied and data routed to them. To develop and adapt in the face of the next wave of change, which blurs the line between technology and business pressure, that way of thinking will need to be elevated to embrace a larger, clearer picture in which ongoing digital transformation is at the heart of the strategy.

We achieve this at The Open Group by continuously developing long-standing solutions, such as The Open Group’s TOGAF® Standard, to provide clearer methodologies for applying Organization Architecture concepts to the digital, Agile enterprise. We’re also doing it by developing new solutions, such as The Open Group Open FootprintTM Forum, which is positioned to standardize how environmental data is assessed and shared in the business.

It is no exaggeration to claim that these predicted megatrends will have a profound impact on human life. We must plan for them now in order to maximize their good impact, or risk being buffeted by unforeseen disruptive forces.

In today’s world, information technology is the most important source of value for companies.

Because IT is generally connected to several, if not all, elements of an organization, its complexity may be a substantial impediment to obtaining this level of awareness. To deal with this, most organizations will invest in IT-related frameworks, with a number of world-class companies giving proven tools, insight, and best practices.

Two such frameworks are IT4IT and TOGAF. But what do the frameworks concentrate on? How do they complement one another? What’s more, how can a business or training candidate select the most appropriate framework?

Let’s take a look at who wins the debate of IT4IT vs. TOGAF.

Choosing IT4IT

IT4IT is a reference architecture for mapping out the functional components of a company. It examines how information technology impacts and empowers many parts of a company, with a focus on the phases when IT contributes to the development of products and services (known as the IT ‘value chain’). This viewpoint allows IT4IT practitioners to identify opportunities for development while also giving decision-makers clarity.

IT4IT, for example, was not created to compete with ITIL, COBIT, or even TOGAF. Instead, it provides a framework, as well as tools and best practices, to complement them and make managing them all more manageable. In summary, IT4IT can map out and optimize whatever technologies, frameworks, and procedures help businesses produce value.

For these processes, IT4IT specifies ‘Primary’ and ‘Supporting’ activities, as well as guiding principles for managing components and data items. It focuses on emphasizing and enhancing specific parts, rather than optimizing the full lifecycle at once, by leveraging its viewpoint to build from the ground up.

The IT4IT architecture is mostly concerned with business demands and the use of technology to generate acceptable solutions. To put it another way, it works to reduce waste. This improved alignment helps in the reduction of unnecessary IT expenses, the simplification of workflows, and the enhancement of productivity. IT4IT’s degree of perspective also creates traceability, which helps to promote continual improvement.

In short, IT4IT designs holistic architectures that integrate business and IT infrastructures. While this may appear to be a complicated system, IT4IT is simple to use and can be installed in stages. At the same time, it takes a prescriptive and comprehensive approach, providing practitioners with a proven plan for managing IT systems.

IT4IT maintains flexibility despite its prescriptive approach. It doesn’t change business models to fit a pre-existing IT4IT framework. Rather, it adapts to enterprises of any size, shape, or sector, for example.

IT4IT certifications have also grown in popularity over time. Businesses are eager to use the architecture and improve their operations, allowing practitioners to take on greater responsibilities and earn better pay.

However, both businesses and people must be committed to investing in IT4IT training. IT4IT has the potential to alter IT within a company, but it requires the company – as well as its management and stakeholders – to be willing to assist execute changes.

Any implementation complexity, on the other hand, will disappear with time. Instead, you’ll find that your IT structure has been streamlined and upgraded to the greatest extent practicable, allowing your company to earn significant and ongoing benefits.

Choosing TOGAF

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is the most widely used Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework in the world, as well as another Open Group innovation. Its goal is to integrate business and IT while also streamlining IT operations and relationships across teams, departments, and outsourced service providers, among other things. It also aids in the definition of organizational needs for achieving strategic goals.

TOGAF 9.2 provides tools and best practices for designing, developing, and applying new architectures that have been proven to be effective. The Architectural Development Method (ADM), which is at the heart of the framework, is also very adaptable, making it simpler for TOGAF practitioners to design architectures that are tailored to the needs of unique businesses rather than a set of standards.

The framework teaches managers how to drive architectural changes, communicate with managers and stakeholders, and so on. Given the framework’s shared vocabulary, TOGAF teams are also well-equipped to collaborate on large projects.

The TOGAF certification program provides a step-by-step guide to mastering enterprise architecture as a discipline. However, obtaining the full benefits of the framework necessitates the use of skilled and experienced practitioners. Naturally, this increases the demand for practitioners, making TOGAF training a good investment for architects who are ready to put in the effort.

Should I choose TOGAF or IT4IT?

Choosing between IT4IT and TOGAF comes down to what you want to achieve.

IT4IT is about enhancing business and IT aspects that result in value-adding products and services. This viewpoint may be particularly valuable for both continuous improvement and large-scale IT transformation initiatives, as it helps in optimization and competitiveness. While IT4IT might be difficult to understand at first, it can be implemented gradually and has great long-term benefits.

IT4IT is a good choice if you need an end-to-end understanding of service delivery inside your firm. It can provide you a comprehensive view of systems, tools, roles, and capabilities, as well as how they can all be enhanced.

TOGAF is a tool for corporate architecture. You can’t do much better if EA is your concentration, especially if you’re a practitioner candidate. The Open Group even offers more specialist variants, such as TOGAF Business Architecture, that adopt a high-level and flexible approach that covers all domains within EA (TOGAF BA).

TOGAF training might be a smart investment if you are planning large-scale activities utilizing your technological infrastructure. It will bring high levels of clarity and perspective to decision-makers while also assisting in the simplification of operations, increased efficiency, and the creation of artifacts that can be reused to drive continuous improvement.

It’s advisable to talk to experienced IT managers inside your company to get a better sense of which framework is ideal for you and your demands. In addition, both TOGAF and IT4IT have active practitioner groups that can address questions about each design.

Combining IT4IT and TOGAF

IT4IT and TOGAF are two well-known IT and business management acronyms. It’s crucial to note, however, that they serve various purposes and operate on different scales.

Enterprise architecture is one of several components under IT4IT. It would be perfectly acceptable to incorporate TOGAF into an IT4IT design, as long as it is properly connected with other value chain aspects. An organization may use IT4IT to actively break down silos in enterprise design, IT service management, and other areas. In their separate functions, IT4IT and TOGAF can even complement one another. In brief, IT4IT may be used to manage EA as part of a wider reference architecture.

‘How Do IT4ITTM and TOGAF® Work Together?’ “The CIO may receive tremendous benefit from adopting IT4IT in a top-down way as a strategic evaluation tool to drive change throughout the IT department and assist reform the IT Operating Model,” says Michael Fultan of the Open Group.

“Using IT4IT as a bottom-up reference model to speed up architectural work and push vendor integration and standardization in the IT Management tool area may provide a massive benefit to the Enterprise Architect.”

Using Good e-Learning to study business and IT transformation and enterprise architecture

Good e-Learning is a multi-award-winning online education company. We’ve worked with hundreds of organizations to upskill applicants on Open Group frameworks, and we were even honored at the 2018 Open Group Awards with the ‘Outstanding Certification Product’ award. Our TOGAF and IT4IT courses are completely approved and appropriate for people and businesses that wish to take full use of the frameworks.

We collaborate with subject matter experts to create courses that not only assist applicants to pass tests but also provide practical guidance to help them succeed in their professions. To assist students to go beyond the curriculum, Good e-Learning periodically offers free downloadable materials, seminars, and blogs on the topics we cover. Our customer service representatives are also highly equipped to respond to queries on certain topics and frameworks.

Students may study on any web-enabled device using the Go. Learn app, which gives them access to each course for six to 24 months. When a student is ready to take a certification test, they can contact the Good e-Learning support staff for a FREE exam voucher or retake the exam.

 

All business domains benefit from digital transformation, which fundamentally improves business operations and provides value to customers. Successful digital transformation requires speed and agility over time, requiring cybersecurity to stay up and become as resilient and responsive to changes in business and technology.

As organizations see the value of digitizing their processes, spending on digital transformation is estimated to exceed $1.8 trillion by 2022. Cybersecurity must be prioritized by corporate entities and their digital transformation specialists, especially as organizations speed their digital initiatives to become critical aspects of operations. How can stakeholders in digital transformation make cybersecurity a more essential part of the process, and how might low-code development help with such a thorough transition?

Why Digital Transformation Specialists Should Prioritize Cybersecurity

A single security breach may derail a company’s whole digital transformation plan, causing severe financial and reputational harm. In 2021, the average cost of a data breach surpassed $4.24 million, the highest level in two decades.

Companies have placed a greater emphasis on securing digital technology, putting pressure on digital transformation officers to guarantee that company activities stay uninterrupted in the event of a disruption. As a result, digital transformation strategists must recognize and capitalize on critical trends while also including cybersecurity best practices in their solutions.

All Digital Assets Must Be Safeguarded

As they deploy digital technologies to recover from the technological interruptions and increased cybersecurity risk created by the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have learned a lot about themselves and their capabilities. Many businesses have battled to maintain the stability of their business operations as a result of the pandemic’s interruptions to their IT systems. This has forced the development of more sophisticated methods for safeguarding sensitive digital assets.

Officers in charge of digital transformation must strengthen their management of precise digital asset inventories, highlighting the critical resources that must be safeguarded, such as network repositories, data centers, and business data. Assets that were not counted during the digitalization of business operations should also be accounted for.

Establishing the ownership and worth of digital assets, limiting access, and more complete monitoring are all good ways to ensure that all assets are protected and maintained consistently in the digital transformation.

Cybersecurity Management and Outsourcing Tasks: Refined Approaches

Companies must be prepared to defend themselves while preserving their operations if and when a crisis occurs. To sanction software for digital projects, ensure adequate defenses against hacking and ransomware attacks, regularly update business continuity and plans, and improve approaches to incident response, strong collaboration between digital transformation officers (DTOs) and chief information security officers (CISOs) is required.

DTOs should be well-versed in the most recent cybersecurity trends, such as the rising use of biometric technology to provide passwordless solutions, greater security spending as a result of new cybersecurity requirements, and predicted growth in ransomware and phishing schemes.

Companies will better match their security policies to their company goals with a refined approach to cybersecurity management, establishing a balance between supporting business innovation and reducing risk to guarantee a smooth route to the required degree of digital transformation. Understanding all of the possible hazards provided by digital transformation and determining whether the benefits received by the organization justify the expenses of mitigating those risks are also required for securing digital transformation. Any digital transformation strategy’s optimal conclusion will be determined by risk-based decision-making based on a fact-driven approach, which will improve productivity and usability. To guarantee that progress is not jeopardized, cybersecurity must move at the same pace as other breakthroughs driving digital transformation. Any cybersecurity measures put in place will establish trust and encourage user adoption, making digital transformation more manageable across the board.

Another factor to consider is that, because a digital transformation project can be a complicated and multi-layered process involving substantial expenditure, organizations may struggle to find experienced cybersecurity specialists. The cybersecurity professional shortage is severe, with the number of specialists approaching three million. Fortunately, software experts and professional organizations help businesses adopt digital transformation strategies that include cybersecurity as a key component. Specialist firms can supply the software and qualified practitioners needed to install and manage cybersecurity measures, allowing businesses to focus on other important areas of the transition.

Cybersecurity Solutions that Support Digital Transformation

Companies can resort to safe software that conducts some of the security jobs for them instead of paying security staff or engaging a security expert agency. Low-code software is currently widely regarded as the next great thing in digital transformation, particularly in light of the recent pandemic-related economic disruptions. Many sectors are increasingly implementing low-code or no-code solutions to boost system development and scalability. The low-code/no-code approach allows software developers, specialists, and non-specialists to easily construct enterprise-grade, task-based apps that function on mobile devices, networks, and in the cloud. Businesses may guarantee that their digital transformation goals are performed smoothly at all levels by teaching non-technical personnel to utilize low-code/no-code software to automate business operations.

Because apps are expected to account for 65% of development activity in the next two years, their importance in implementing cybersecurity measures is projected to grow. Low-code incorporates security elements such as:

• File monitoring
• User control
• Code validation

Companies must verify that any new low-code/no-code application does not pose a security risk to the company’s infrastructure, taking into account the data utilized and the application’s connection points. Digital transformation requires secure coding methods, with code that is constantly and thoroughly inspected. Increased monitoring is required for internet-facing apps. It’s critical to work with a security-conscious low-code/no-code software provider.

Beyond standard corporate security measures, IT businesses are adding edge security solutions, such as software-defined wide-area network services, to secure people and systems. With zero-trust network architectures (ZTNA), enterprises must verify all users and processes for all system touchpoints constantly, adding extra security layers to digital transformation.

While the zero-trust strategy improves data location awareness, it can’t safeguard what it can’t see, such as undocumented or hidden systems and apps. To adopt a truly zero-trust strategy across the environment, companies must modernize and enhance their older technologies.

While other network security components such as secure online gateways, cloud security, and endpoint detection are being highlighted, consistent investment in data loss prevention services has become routine.

Increased global competitiveness, as well as a growing focus on hacking and ransomware, will continue to grip sectors and compel them to become more automated in a digital world that shows no signs of stopping down, especially in the pandemic era. The cybersecurity of a digital transformation plan is essential for automation to be as effective as possible and to be broadly implemented inside a firm.

During the pandemic’s peak, city digitalization officials quickly changed the smart city plans they were progressively implementing to save lives, keep key services functioning, and save companies from going bankrupt.

They used their tools and personnel to make COVID-19 testing, immunizations, and emergency disbursements more efficient, and to deliver new services in weeks rather than months or years.

Some argue that the crisis has expedited ten years of transition and demonstrated the benefits of digital technology and data in addressing real-world issues. It also instilled a renewed faith in local government’s ability to innovate in the face of bureaucracy and limited resources.

As the epidemic progresses and cities consider the long-term picture, they must consider their current duties and obligations, as well as whether they can actually continue what they’ve started.

Some communities are nonetheless anxious about meeting up to new expectations while taking precautions to ensure that their expenditures and innovation programs last. This is exacerbated by the flood of ARPA and other federal monies, which cities are working hard to ensure offer advantages that are both financially and practically viable.

Where does local governance start and end?

One difficulty is that many locals began purchasing online for the first time during the outbreak. They now want their city to provide the same level of service and speed as firms like Amazon, and they may be disappointed.

Another factor is the broad variety of obligations cities have taken up throughout the pandemic.

According to Frank Martz, City Manager of Altamonte Springs, there are now some questions regarding where local government’s responsibility begins and ends, as well as what may be expected of them in future crises.

The difficulty for cities, he added, is to strike a balance between what’s achievable in terms of technical capabilities and the potential consequences on public confidence if financing, resources, or circumstances change.

Martz asked them to think about “whether you are putting yourselves in an unsustainable situation as a city.” And what does it mean for politics and everything else if you fail in that role? ”

More than money

Many communities supported small companies with grants, streamlined processes, and marketing programs using funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) and now ARPA.

However, because these funds are not recurrent, more effort is required to establish long-term resilience for maximum long-term effect.

During the pandemic, Raj Amin, Teem Ventures’ Founding Partner, assisted in the formation of a small business working group in the township of Montclair, NJ, comprised of volunteers with paid “day jobs” who wanted to serve their community during a tough time. The organization and its three sub-committees, with the mayor’s support but acting independently, gathered together small companies, non-profits, and community stakeholders to assist keep money moving locally.

The first focus was on gathering small company and community needs and communicating important information through a centralized email list, social media, and webinars.

Later, the group went on to promotional initiatives, such as the introduction of a “Shop, Eat, Repeat” campaign and the distribution of QR codes across the city to direct visitors to company websites.

The most recent phase focuses on a searchable ‘evergreen’ local company directory, which was built using grant funds and Teem Ventures’ pro bono resources.

The free self-registration directory has attracted more than 200 firms. Small business owners may utilize the ‘Small Business Spotlight’ to advertise forthcoming specials, link consumers to their social media channels and websites, and have their information published.

“This has been an excellent example of how to unify the town and demonstrated that we can marshal resources at a local level,” Amin remarked.

“It’s fantastic, but now that we have this energy surplus, we need to figure out how to keep this energy and innovation going.”

The organization is currently searching for additional methods to help the Montclair community, such as gathering more feedback from local business owners, increasing resident participation, building a long-term funding strategy, and assisting in the drafting of an economic development plan.

Building Capacity

Cities observed that some small firms lack basic digital abilities, such as having no website or using social media. Without the proper papers, cash-only businesses struggled to get help during the pandemic.

Going forward, addressing these concerns will be a top focus.

South Bend, Indiana, has developed a ‘digital storefront’ grant program to assist local companies in developing or improving their online presence and capabilities. To avoid small enterprises being “overwhelmed” by too many resources, the city is likewise focused on user experience. According to Denise Riedl, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of South Bend, this involves streamlining processes between agencies and combining as many applications as feasible.

Coral Gables has given a variety of training on digital literacy, cybersecurity, and e-commerce themes such as making the most of social media, online advertising, and new technology, in addition to microgrants and other forms of assistance.

Chattanooga’s Enterprise Center established a resiliency checklist in conjunction with the city and community partners to help companies, non-profits, and faith-based organizations better prepare for future disasters. The tool contains information to assist firms in obtaining the necessary documents, relationships, and skills, as well as learning about loans and grants.

Streamlined spending

With a rising desire to simplify expenditures and adopt a holistic approach, there is a growing push throughout the organization to use digital technologies and new financing.

Ubicquia is a multi-purpose smart city platform that works with existing lighting and third-party vendor solutions like cameras and license plate scanners.

The system and new apps may be implemented “in literally minutes,” according to Ian Aaron, the company’s CEO.

As cities try to reduce the digital divide, providing Wi-Fi for citizens is a key use case. The platform includes a number of ‘out of the box’ artificial intelligence applications, such as public safety video and traffic, pedestrian, and bicycle counts. Ubicquia has also developed unique AI installations to track unlawful waste dumping, garbage can usage, and micro-mobility device counts and whereabouts.

Typically, cities will begin with a small number of use cases and expand over time.

“On the same platform, we’re increasingly seeing numerous use cases across several budgets,” Aaron added.

“We can improve economics, speed projects, and deliver on the promise of real-time cities if we modify traditional thinking around how to fund, install, and monitor essential infrastructure,” he said.

Dallas is establishing two smart streetlight testbeds, each of which will test distinct use cases such as public safety and public Wi-Fi. This is being done in conjunction with a sidewalk repair and replacement project that will include more lighting to improve safety.

“We’ve found that the use cases are coming from different departments that all require new infrastructure, so the goal is to look at a single platform for the city’s sustainability,” said William Zielinski, City of Dallas’ Chief Information Officer.

Leaders agreed that the rise toward multifunctional platforms needs underpinning regulations for data-gathering systems, and many are already following in the footsteps of cities like Oakland, which have established oversight committees and standards.

Measures

Cities may use performance indicators to analyze their investments and make better decisions in the future.

The newest budget, according to Jeanne Holm, Deputy Mayor for Budget and Innovation in Los Angeles, was the “most progressive” in the city’s history, with $1 billion for homelessness and $1 billion for fairness and justice. It also includes money for the country’s largest guaranteed income experiment, as well as participatory budgeting, digital inclusion, and broadband.

In addition, the city of Los Angeles has begun a program that will redirect certain 911 calls about homelessness and other non-violent situations away from police enforcement and toward trained, unarmed mental health specialists.

According to Holm, her department is aiming to ensure that everything that is financed has performance criteria that department managers can report against and that are in line with the mayor’s goals.

Cities are creating dashboards for the first time to track how money is distributed, and spent, and the final consequences as they employ ARPA monies.

Scaling data

The pandemic has demonstrated the value of data in assisting cities in solving problems, from identifying COVID hotspots and recovery patterns to delivering assistance to people who need it most.

However, some cities are still having trouble persuading some agencies to share data, and others are worried about their capacity to maintain data initiatives as priorities alter.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Nitin Agarwal, Worldwide Lead for Smart Cities, emphasizes the necessity of shifting away from a siloed data strategy and toward a single platform that can enable integrated analytics and give greater value to data stakeholders sooner. As cities modernize their infrastructure and incorporate more technology, this is getting increasingly urgent.

“With a single platform, you’ll have all the data, and you’ll be able to monitor, manage, and control — particularly IoT applications,” he added.

“Once you have this, you can build all of the city applications on top of it, such as smart parking, smart transportation, smart garbage, and so on.”

The most important question

Through a holistic strategy underpinned by policies and an outcome-focused approach, the current influx of historic funds into US cities presents an opportunity to not only upgrade infrastructure now but also to improve communities for the long-term and transform city practices and culture in the process.

One of the first things business executives ask when they get ideas for innovative initiatives is, “How are you going to sustain it?”

Zero-trust security models, the growth of wireless WANs, and the advent of pop-up companies are all contributing to accelerating IoT networking capabilities innovation.

The growth of devices and use cases, as well as the need for stronger business architectures, remain the most important stories in IoT. However, the world of IoT networking is undergoing significant changes. Zero-trust networking, the expansion of wireless technologies, and the rise of pop-up operations are the most significant networking innovations shaping the future of IoT.

IoT and Zero Trust

IoT devices frequently lack a comprehensive, general-purpose operating system. As a result, they are unable to execute endpoint protection software or a zero-trust network agent like a software-defined perimeter client. They may not be able to protect themselves against hostile network traffic at all, except by being notified where and on what ports IP address management messages should be sent.

IT businesses use a range of techniques to overcome this problem. A wholly independent physical network may have been the norm once upon a time. For isolating certain types of devices, most businesses have moved to independent virtual LANs (VLANs).

Organizations that use a zero-trust strategy, on the other hand, do not rely solely on VLAN logical segmentation. They’re putting policy enforcement points in place in the architecture. For example, a device or a group of devices belonging to the same class can be protected by zero-trust gateways that regulate all communication.

Enterprises may expect to see new devices support various classes of the zero-trust clients as IoT platforms grow and standardize, and zero-trust providers hone their emphasis. Vendors are focusing on expanding application container systems to the IoT arena, for example, which would allow a containerized zero-trust client to control device connections.

IoT and the Wireless WAN

According to Nemertes Research, there is growing interest in using wireless technology for WAN connectivity (either 4G or 5G). Most WANs have at least one site that uses wireless for WAN in some capacity, usually as a failover or backup connection in the case of a wired link failure.

The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, prompted the fast development of wireless WAN (WWAN), in part because many enterprises needed to extend their WAN to at least a few home offices. The improvement in the speed and dependability of cellular data networks has also been significant. When you consider dropping cellular data rates and the expensive expenses of traditional low-bandwidth cable connectivity (such as T1), it’s easy to see why businesses should transition to WWAN.

One of the use cases mentioned by WWAN adopters is using cellular data services to carry IoT traffic. According to Nemertes, this use case was mentioned by about 15% of companies.

IoT traffic includes a wide range of IoT activities, such as the following:

• constructing environmental controls that are linked to a central database and administration panel;
• security systems that provide information on the state of doors; and
• Room utilization is reported through motion detectors.

A Slice for IoT

5G network slicing, which is still in its early stages in the carrier market, will help IoT on the WWAN by fine-tuning performance requirements to fit the demands of certain devices and use cases. Slicing allows network providers to allocate and safeguard bandwidth for specific use cases, as well as prioritize bit handling to manage latency across slices.

Enterprises require reliable data transmission with minimal latency for specific devices, such as robotic forklift position information in a large warehouse. The forklift data would not have to fight for bandwidth with someone viewing a movie on their phone during their lunch break in this scenario of slicing.

Ultrawideband

Ultrawideband (UWB) is another wireless network technology that will see more IoT use for the following reasons:

• When necessary, it can transport a large amount of data quickly.
• When needed, it can transport a little amount of data while utilizing very little power.
• It has the ability to deliver extremely precise position data.

UWB is already found in high-end cellphones and automobile key fobs, and it will continue to expand in use cases. Motion detectors for building security and in-building location tracking for everything from cleaning equipment to patients in assisted-living facilities are just a few examples.

UWB will ultimately be used in sensor swarms due to its ability to provide low-bitrate, low-power, or ultrafast network connectivity, as well as the ability to precisely determine physical proximity. Individual devices will collect and exchange low and slow data streams with one another as they coordinate data collection, but will appoint various battery-rich members to provide aggregated data at a fast speed.

IoT and pop-up business

The pop-up business model, in which retail and professional services organizations build temporary sites to fulfill short-term opportunities or demand surges, fits very perfectly with WWAN. WWAN is an excellent solution to give complete enterprise connection to pop-up sites while requiring no advance time to set up or take down service.

WWAN, on the other hand, is essential for integrating IoT devices in pop-up branches into an existing IoT infrastructure. Businesses may deploy security measures to devices immediately and monitor them in the same way they handle devices in more traditional locations. A door sensor, for example, can be installed above the door of a newly leased office for two months and immediately become part of the security system.

By The Open Group

Every company has to be agile to deal with a variety of pressures and changes both inside and outside the company. Enterprise Architecture provides the framework and overall picture of an organization that organizations require. The TOGAF® standard, for example, is a standard developed by The Open Group. Both Lean and Enterprise Architecture may help organizations become more agile, but they do it from distinct, complementary perspectives. Many firms are leveraging the strengths of both methodologies by combining EA and Lean knowledge, tactics, and people.

We’ve been watching the progress of agile and, in particular, what it implies in the context of Enterprise Architecture, at The Open Group. We’ve put together a series of seminars that look at how Lean and EA techniques may be utilized to complement one another and benefit a company as a whole,

1. Agile Enterprise Architecture: Opposites Attract!

In software development, agile methodologies have become the standard. However, genuine business agility demands more than a wide array of agile teams. Also, if you solely concentrate on the agility of your development processes, you may miss the forest for the trees: why do you want to be agile as a company and what does it entail?

In smaller companies, a few agile/DevOps teams may coordinate change between themselves, and management lines are short enough that strategic direction can be communicated directly to teams. However, in bigger businesses, there may be hundreds of agile teams, each working on a different area of the huge “enterprise machine,” necessitating additional collaboration. Even if agile teams create agile silos that ignore their surroundings, the outcome will not be adaptable or flexible. However, future transformation may become much more difficult, emphasizing the need for good architecture.

And a business is more than just software. This is where Enterprise Architecture’s “big picture” perspective comes in useful, as it includes more stakeholders than just software users, such as desired (and unwanted!) business outcomes, capabilities to be developed or improved, resources needed, business processes, IT and physical infrastructure to be realized, and more.

This webinar will cover how true business agility necessitates agility in both methods and products, as well as several use-cases for combining Enterprise Architecture, agile, and DevOps, and how an agile approach like the Scaled Agile Framework® can be fruitfully combined with an Enterprise Architecture framework like the TOGAF® standard.

2. Becoming more Agile with Lean and Enterprise Architecture

While Lean and EA have different scopes and approaches, they may complement each other quite well. All have the same aim in mind: to improve the performance of the company.

This should come as no surprise, given that many companies run concurrent Lean and EA projects. It’s only natural to search for synergy when you have a common purpose. We concluded that many EA projects should be leaner and that leaner initiatives can have a greater impact when driven by EA. In this webinar, we’ll look at how Lean and EA may work together to achieve great results.

3. Agile Scale: Architecture in the Age of Complex

Without a question, the agile movement is having a significant impact on software development processes, as well as IT department organizations and beyond. Antoine Lonjon describes how the EA discipline is being seriously challenged by this agile manifesto, and how it exhibits a shift in focus from the conventional command and control organization of work to the organization of purposes in this webinar offered by The Open Group.

This webinar explores the paradigm change from conventional Enterprise Architecture to Agile-Lean Enterprise Architecture, as well as the transition from traditional Enterprise Architecture to the Digital Enterprise Architecture eco-system.

4. Architecture in Agile Environments – Challenges and Solutions to Maximize Value

While agile development has become the de facto standard for software development, genuine business agility necessitates more than scrum teams producing functional solutions. However, if you merely concentrate on the small-scale agility offered by agile software development, you may miss the forest for the trees: why do you want to be agile as an organization, and what does it entail?

An organization is more than a collection of small-scale projects. The puzzle pieces that these teams are working on must somehow come together. And, preferably, there is a future vision that is in line with the company’s strategy, as well as a set of objectives that the business aspires to. Enterprise Architecture enters the picture at this point.

Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. Only having a horde of scrum teams without some integrative, overarching approach may lead to a disconnected landscape consisting of agile silos. EA without agile may lead to slow and bureaucratic organizations that do not respond quickly enough to changes and trends, and only having a horde of scrum teams without some integrative, overarching approach may lead to a disconnected landscape consisting of agile silos. However, by combining the characteristics of both models, we may create organizations that operate as a cohesive unit without the need for a central, command-and-control management system that stifles local development and innovation.

5. IT4IT™ Applied: Case Studies for Agile IT4IT (Part One)

We live in a society where everyone appears to desire everything now more than before. While this is difficult, it is also driving new habits and delivery methods. Who would have guessed that when The Open Group’s IT4IT Reference Architecture was released in October 2015, there would already be a desire for rapid implementation methods and a shorter time to value?

Fortunately, HPE Software Services has already developed a strategy called Agile IT4IT, which they have utilized with some clients across the world.

This Session:

• Explains how an agile methodology may be utilized to increase value realization in the context of the IT4T Reference Architecture.
• This article provides some actual insight into the benefits and problems that this technique has proven, particularly challenges linked to:
  • The term “agile” refers to a notion.
  • Concerns about people and culture
  • When it comes to topics like operating models, there is a general lack of maturity in IT.
  • The various issues that exist in different regions of the world, as well as the willingness to use a single reference design to manage the IT company
• Provides practical recommendations to the audience on how to decide if they are ready to adopt the IT4IT standard in such a targeted, value-based manner.

6. IT4IT™ Applied: Case Studies for Agile IT4IT (Part Two)

We live in a society where everyone appears to desire everything now more than before. While this is difficult, it is also driving new habits and delivery methods. Joshua presented a strategy he adopted with a few customers in “Case Studies for Agile IT4ITTM Part One” (Ref. D175), which is geared at providing durable outcomes with the IT4IT Reference Architecture quickly.

The adoption of both the method and the deliverables is a requirement for this approach. One of the most important components is getting stakeholders to accept change and adapt to outcomes.

As part of Agile IT4IT, this presentation provides some genuine insight into the benefits and pitfalls of a Management of Organizational Change (MOC) strategy, including:

• Within Agile IT4IT, MOC is a concept.
• The cultural, people, and adoption difficulties, as well as how to spot and address them
• Provide practical advice to the audience on how to use MOC for Agile IT4IT.

The Enterprise Architecture domain of business architecture is about more than simply business capabilities and procedures. It’s all about maximizing value for your customers and contributing to the development of a more customer-centric business.

The Importance of Value in Enterprise Architecture

Business processes have traditionally been Enterprise Architects’ primary means of communication with business stakeholders. The concept of business capability, on the other hand, is a relatively contemporary term that is frequently employed in Enterprise Architecture. As shown in this video titled “TOGAF® Business Architecture: Company Capability Guide,” business capabilities enable a clearer knowledge of how software applications assist the business. Some new business capabilities have no accompanying apps, whilst others have an excessive number. Both concepts alone fall short of capturing the value that an agile customer-driven organization must deliver to maintain and grow its market share in the face of increasingly rapid and continuous innovative changes, as well as more informed customers who force them to adopt more fluid business strategies.

In a customer-driven business, enterprise architects must comprehend and apply the idea of value, as demonstrated in Figure 1. A company often offers many value propositions to its various customer groups (or personas) and partners, which are provided via value streams comprised of multiple value phases. Internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and, in many cases, the customer are all involved in the value phases. Customer journey steps are enabled by value stages, which are enabled by capabilities and operationalized by procedures (level 2 or 3 usually). If you wish to learn more, the TOGAF® Business Architecture: Value Stream Guide video gives a very clear and easy explanation. Customer journeys aren’t technically part of business architecture, but they may be highly beneficial when interacting with business stakeholders.

These value streams/stages aren’t going to appear anywhere. A business must be able to accomplish a specified goal, which is to offer value to the triggering stakeholder, which in this case is the customer. This ability serves as a business enabler. The organization will be unable to give value to its stakeholders without this capacity (customers). A business process operationalizes a capacity that allows a value stage. It’s also owned by one or more business units or divisions inside an organization, and it’s utilized by one or more of them. At least one application, system, or IT service is usually required to provide a capacity.

Value propositions, value streams, and value phases are the reasons why a project or effort should be undertaken. A stakeholder is the “Whom” who must participate for value to be created. The business process describes “How” a company might generate value. Finally, business competency is “What” the company must manage or perform to generate value.

Important Definitions

Using the TOGAF Standard definitions as a guide, each element in Figure 1 may be defined as follows:

Business Process. A business process is a collection of connected and organized operations carried out by people or machines in a certain order to generate a service or a product (or serves a business goal or objective).

Business Capability. A business capability is a specialized ability that a company can have or trade to attain a certain goal. Applications, systems, and/or IT services must support a business capability.

Customer. A person who buys a product or service.

Customer Journey. The customer journey encompasses all of the experiences that customers have while interacting with an organization in a series of progressive phases before and after acquiring a product or service. Instead of focusing on a single aspect of a transaction or event, the customer journey will capture the entire customer experience. A customer journey is made up of many stages.

Product. A thing, an idea, a technique, information, an object, or a service supplied by an organization is developed as a consequence of a process and serves a need or satisfies a want of a consumer. A product is frequently included in a value proposition.

Stakeholder. A person, group, organization, or class of people who are interested in a system.

Service. A repeated activity is a distinct behavior that may be requested or otherwise activated by a building block. A product is frequently included in a value proposition.

Value Proposition. A value proposition is a promise to provide value to the triggering stakeholder (typically a customer) who believes that at least one benefit will be received as a result of their purchase.

Value Stream. A representation of a customer, stakeholder, or end-total user’s result created by an end-to-end collection of value-adding actions. A value stream is made up of numerous value phases that each include at least one identified stakeholder.

Enterprise Architecture and the 5 Phases of Agile Strategy Execution

Let’s now place each of the pieces in Figure 1 above to choose which of the 5 phases to implement an organizational agile strategy to take, as shown in Figure 2 below. The book “Practical Guide to Agile Strategy Execution: Design, Architect, Prioritize, and Deliver your Corporate Future Successfully” explains these steps in-depth.

Throughout the five phases of an organization’s agile strategy execution, customers (segments and/or personas) and partners are involved. All phases include business stakeholders, except for the fourth, which is the agile delivery and execution phase. Stakeholders in IT are primarily involved in initiative planning (step 3) as well as agile delivery and execution (step 4).

To satisfy particular strategies and goals, value propositions, goods, and services are generally defined in business design and strategy (step 1). Typically, customer journeys, value streams, and value stages are analyzed at the start of your architecting change (step 2). In both architecting change and planning initiatives, business capabilities are investigated (steps 2 and 3). Business processes are mostly handled in the agile delivery and execution phase (step 4) at the operational and tactical levels, where business process experts and agile experts must fulfill explicit targets while using tactics to measure progress.

Enterprise architects must realize that business architecture is more than simply business capabilities and procedures if they are to add value to their organizations. Enterprise architects should not restrict themselves to architecting their organization’s transformation and initiative planning. Enterprise architects may also help their company’s clients and partners get the most out of their investments. Including all parts of business architecture in your enterprise architecture practice will increase the value of your team to business stakeholders during the initial business design and strategy phase, as well as to IT stakeholders throughout the agile delivery and execution phase.

A master’s degree in business administration aids students in better understanding corporate dynamics. In today’s world, They feel it is critical to be able to perceive business as a whole. Students must use the Enterprise Architect lens and break down silos to perceive the business as one entity. Understanding that business does not operate in silos, as some of our MBA courses may lead us to believe, is critical. An organization must function cooperatively to be efficient and effective, which means that all of the enterprise’s core parts must advance in lockstep.

“A company is just as good as its weakest link.”

Let’s use the human body as an example. A human body needs an objective and goal, as well as food as fuel, sleep as rejuvenation, and a family as a support system, to function successfully.

Similarly, an organization needs a strategic goal, business alignment to that vision, applications to carry out the business plan, data to fuel growth, and technology to keep the organization working at all times. When we can perceive the stages of the business – business, application, data, and technology – as a linked whole, business management is guaranteed to succeed. Enterprise Architecture binds these phases together into a single, easily accessible entity. As a result, this topic provides an excellent chance for MBA graduates to link their knowledge from multiple disciplines and use it to get the business engine rolling.

Similarly, an organization needs a strategic goal, business alignment to that vision, applications to carry out the business plan, data to fuel growth, and technology to keep the organization working at all times. When we can perceive the stages of the business – business, application, data, and technology – as a linked whole, business management is guaranteed to succeed. Enterprise Architecture binds these phases together into a single, easily accessible entity. As a result, this topic provides an excellent chance for MBA graduates to link their knowledge from multiple disciplines and use it to get the business engine rolling.

Enterprise architecture as a subject and familiarity with reference architectures such as IT4ITTM would aid EA aspirants in appreciating tools for managing a digital enterprise. As students, we are aware that many businesses are undergoing digital transformations. However, if we are left to our own devices, we are unlikely to know where to begin the trip or how to proceed with the digital transformation. To address the above-mentioned issue, familiarity with the TOGAF® Architecture Development Method (ADM) would be a great place to start. A realistic beginning point may be an as-is evaluation followed by a to-be assessment spanning business, data, application, and technology. The phase “Opportunities and Solutions” will assist in developing a roadmap of numerous digital transformation projects that a company may pick from.

Enterprise Architecture as a b-school subject would span across other areas and provide students with a comprehensive perspective. In a business analytics class, for example, students study statistical modeling and how to make data-driven business choices. Now that Enterprise Architecture is a subject, they will begin to value ideas such as:

• The maturity of an organization’s analytics capacity
• In a multi-application context, the importance of a single source of truth cannot be overstated.
• Maintaining a data catalog with all data pieces and building matrices such as the application-data matrix is critical.
• Is the business analytics application supported by technology — is it on the cloud, for example?

There are several advantages to having Enterprise Architecture as a “must-have” subject. We are certain that MBA graduates who have the capacity to perceive the enterprise as a whole can help their companies navigate through shifting business conditions. And, while they’re steering the ship, they’ll have the know-how to make adjustments rapidly enough to keep up with the shifting commercial landscape. As a result, EA as a topic will assist MBA graduates in growing their business in a sustainable and resilient manner.