Popular Enterprise Architecture Frameworks

Enterprise architecture (EA) is an organization's business function to help how the business and technology work together. In other words, it is a blueprint for structure and operations. The Organization determines the objectives to achieve an effective manner. Enterprise Architecture framework is a structural approach to deal with Organization enterprise business in the digital era. Enterprise architecture defines the borders of different departments in an organization. 

Below are some of the benefits of using Enterprise Architecture in an Organization

• Collaboration between IT and business teams
• Resiliency and adaptability of new business processes
• Prioritize the investments from business teams
• Define the long-term goals and plan according to achieve the goals
• Re-design the processes while any mergers, acquisitions, and Organization changes
• Comprehensive IT architecture view to business teams

Enterprise Architect in an Organization is responsible for analyzing the business processes aligned with business goals, which are agile and durable. Several frameworks have evolved to help Organizations in a structural approach to developing an enterprise architecture. EA frameworks can be classified into Comprehensive and Industry Specific frameworks. Leading comprehensive enterprise architecture frameworks are 4+1 view, TOGAF, Zachman, SABAS, and Gartner. Industry-specific Enterprise frameworks include BIAN, DODAF, FEAF, and ODF. 

Comprehensive EA Frameworks

• 4+1 View:  4+1 main views are Local, Process, Development, and Physical. The fifth view was the Use case. Used to prioritize different views in the Organization.  
• TOGAF: TOGAF was developed by 300 enterprise architects from Dell, Cognizant, and Microsoft and is also called the Open Group Architecture Framework. TOGAF's Architecture Development Method (ADM) is a step-by-step process defined for an enterprise. 
• Zachman: Zachman mainly uses a template-based design rather than a methodology. Zachman comprises a two-dimensional matrix of "perspectives" and "fundamental questions." This model helps business stockholders to focus on independent objectives.
• SABAS: SABAS is a Security Architecture for Enterprise Architecture model to build tools to identify the risks. 
• Gartner EA framework: After acquiring Meta Group, Gartner published for Enterprise Architectural Planning for Organizations practice. CompTIA recognized it focuses on business outcomes. 

Industry-Specific EA Frameworks 

• BIAN: BIAN is a Banking Industry Architecture Network developed by a consortium of financial organizations, especially in the Banking industry in Europe. This framework helps the banking industry to speed up the architecture initiatives by leveraging the blueprints developed.
• DODAF: DODAF is a Department of Defense Architecture Framework developed by US Defense to mitigate issues like integrating long-lived systems and diverse systems (especially interoperability issues resolutions). Different countries build their own EA frameworks to work. Examples are Canada uses DNDAF, the UK uses MODAF, and NATA uses NAF.
• FEAF: FEAF is a US Federal Enterprise Architectural Framework to mitigate the duplication of processes, IT systems, and independently developed systems. The Indian government created IndEA to remove the duplication process and attempt to add EA modeling from different domains.
• ODF: ODM is an Open Digital Framework developed by TM Forum for the Telecommunication industry. Majorly optimized the challenges related to legacy migration and cloud transformation. 

Conclusion

Choosing the right frameworks for Enterprise architecture development is challenging for enterprise architects. The framework choice should be based on industry acceptance, skill availability, support, learning curve, ease of action, and support for best practices. Several EA tools are available in the market, and Organizations must choose the proper tool to adopt and implement. The EA tool has to be adopted by the IT and Business users to track their goals.