The Four-Domain Architecture: An approach to support enterprise architecture design

Managing an enterprise architecture is a challenging task. While careful planning typically goes into its design, an enterprise architecture actually emerges as a result of implementing individual projects. It is this de facto architecture, not the conceptual one, that provides the capabilities for executing business strategies, and understanding this emergent architecture is of paramount importance. In this paper, we present the Four-Domain Architecture (FDA), which integrates business process, information, knowledge, and elements pertaining to infrastructure and organization. The FDA approach can help guide the development of both the conceptual and emergent architecture. The FDA helps an enterprise in the definition, design, and creation of a set of tools and methods to support frameworks such as the Zachman framework.