Enterprise Architecture Framework with Early Business/ICT Alignment for Extended Enterprises

Incorporating information and communication technology (ICT) is strongly necessary in extended enterprises. To do this, enterprise engineering approach has important benefits; however, there is not a complete framework to model ICT components and ICT/business alignment. This paper presents an enterprise architecture framework for extended enterprises. The main aim enclosed in this paper is to provide a modeling framework from enterprise engineering approach which including ICT. A comparative analysis has been conducted in life cycle phases, modeling views and strategic alignment between different enterprise architectures. Next, the required building blocks have been proposed: ICT conceptualization, application portfolio, maturity model, alignment heuristics and strategic dependencies. This proposal has been applied in the collaborative order management process of a ceramic tile company.