Enterprise Architecture for Digital Business

Chapter 1. Form Follows Function

Lori MacVittie, F5 principal technical evangelist

The way businesses operate has changed over the past 20 years, with even more dramatic changes occurring in just the past 5 years. As businesses continue their rapid transformation from physical to digital, enterprise architecture must also transform to support it. As a technology leader, you will be directly or indirectly involved with guiding and executing this transformation.

This is no small task. Enterprise architecture as a discipline was established and standardized in the late 20th century, before the wide adoption of the internet and digital business models. The organization you work for likely has an enterprise architecture in place—one that was developed decades ago and has remained largely unchanged.

The 20th-century architect Louis Sullivan, mentor of the still celebrated Frank Lloyd Wright, coined the maxim, “Form follows function.” This principle is often applied to software engineering, in which the “function” is the business process, and the “form” is the enterprise architecture. The premise is that if the architecture prescribes how a business operates, the business will be constrained and unable to adapt to changing conditions. Therefore, as the function of business transforms from physical to digital, the form of the enterprise architecture must also transform.

In this chapter, we discuss key technology trends driving new functions into business and the changes needed in enterprise ...