Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises

Introduction

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...

So begins Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens was writing about London and Paris in 1775. But Dickens could have been writing about the field of enterprise architecture, the science of aligning business needs and IT solutions, as it exists today.

It is the best of times. The goal of enterprise architecture is to maximize the business value delivered by IT investment. For most enterprises, ...