Role of EA set for major change: Infosys

A new research has revealed that the role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) is set to undergo a major change, says India’s software major Infosys Technologies.

With companies starting to use EA to implement business strategy and govern the interaction of business units and assets to collaboratively create
value for all stakeholders, the role of IT is being elevated to become an integral part of corporate strategy.

According to Infosys, the role of enterprise architecture is changing. When it started off it was simply an IT-centric function whereas today it aims to align IT with business. Infosys believes that the next stage in EA's evolution will make the discipline of enterprise architecture a central tool not for managing IT, but for implementing business strategy.

The conclusions are part of the survey which Infosys conducted among 260 CIOs, chief architects, and business and IT managers on why and how they are practicing enterprise architecture.

The research reveals that enterprise architecture has achieved the objectives of previous evolutionary stages; that it is helping IT to support the corporation; and that architecture is increasingly accepted as a tool for implementing business strategy across
the enterprise.

The consensus among those surveyed is that enterprise architecture is now ready for the next step – to become a tool for transforming organizations by enabling flexibility and agility. It will focus not only on IT, but on defining a platform for implementing business strategy, and joint value creation with business partners and customers.

Key findings of the report said that 36 per cent of EA teams surveyed actively participate in their company's strategic business planning; 19 per cent of all EA teams spend most of their time on Business Architecture, a 36 per cent increase vis-à-vis last year’s survey; 20 per cent of the companies have the architecture function reporting at the corporate level, a reflection of the increasing relevance of EA and integration and information integrity are key concerns of EA, with Customer Data Integration moving from eighth to third place, vis-à-vis a previous research.