The world of business and commerce is changing. As technology advances at a rate of
knots and the geography of global working becomes less and less relevant, so the need
to run an effective business becomes more and more important. Businesses grow at an
alarming rate, often overnight. Interest in particular field can explode resulting in
massive, instantaneous business expansion or, rather sadly, the reverse can often
happen. New technologies, the increase in power and performance of existing technologies
and even legislation can result in businesses going broke at an equally
alarming rate. Even when business expansion is more measured, this is often through
acquisition of other businesses which brings a whole new swathe of problems with it.
It is essential, therefore, that a business can be managed and controlled in way
that makes its behaviour as predictable as practically possible and which allows for
the flexibility of an uncertain future. To manage and control the change associated
with any business, there is a need for enterprise architecture (EA).
EA is one of those areas where everyone seems to have an opinion, yet fewpeople
seem to be able to agree as to exactly what is EA and what does it mean to them.
This book is aimed at helping people to develop their own EAs through
modelling. This book provides a description of modelling techniques, in terms of
the notation and the approach to applying it, along with a solid approach to modelling
EAs. This is an approach that is focussed on modelling and, hence, can be
used in conjunction with any number of established techniques or processes for EA
development and maintenance. This book is not intended to replace these techniques,
but to serve as an enabler to actually realise the EA.