Enterprise Architecture from Practice Issues to Research Innovation

A number of EA frameworks, methods and tools are available on the market, and already at use in administrations, companies, and proposed by consultants. Organisations are able to solve a number of issues using them, but these approaches generate new risks too, and some issues remain open. What are the next evolutions to cope with these risks and issues? We believe that research has already anticipated these risks and solved some of these issues that organisations dealing with-or will have to face in a near future. The purpose of this paper is to draw from these lessons learned in research a few guidelines to face the next generation of challenges of Enterprise Architecture. I.INTRODUCTION nterprise Architecture (EA) is widely used in practice as a way to deal with a number of practical organisational issues and Information System (IS) issues such as enterprise agility, IS flexibility, interoperability, alignment, governance, etc. E EA entered the enterprise world in the 80's when J. Zachman created the IS Architecture framework [1], then left IBM to fund the ZIFA institute and disseminate his well-known Zachman framework [2]. The Zachman EA framework stands in a 6x6 table which cells identify the various models that can be developed when documenting an organisation (enterprise as well as government agency) and its information system. The Zachman framework was seminal in its way to establish a common vocabulary and a set of perspectives for building a holistic description of complex enterprise systems. The fundamental message behind Zachman Framework is inherited from the lessons learned in research works achieved in the 70's about IS engineering and software engineering methodologies: various modelling techniques are needed to deal efficiently with various subjects, and they are complementary to understand complex systems such as IS ecosystems [3]. Both industry and government agencies all over the world have recognized the value of EA. In the 90's, the Clinger-Cohen Act (also called IT Management Reform Act, 1996) was created to improve the way the US federal government acquires and manages information technology. It required to use performance based management principles for acquiring IT, which generated a number of changes. Clinger-Cohen Act mandated the use of a formal EA process for all federal agencies. In Europe, several governmental EA initiatives have been also been undertaken, such as the InfoCitizen project (to establish a common EA approach among European countries), Eu-Publi.com (to facilitate collaboration across employees of European public …