Copyright 2008. Auerbach Publications. All rights reserved.

. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or
applicable copyright law.

Chapter 1

Introduction:
Enterprise Architecture
and Technology Trends

Why is information technology (IT*) critical to organizations? What are the important trends in
IT infrastructure technology? What are the technical and cost issues? How can a firm manage the
infrastructure in an optimal manner that reduces costs and maximizes opportunity? Considering
the answers to those questions, why are enterprise architecture (EA) methodologies important?
Read on.

1.1 Introduction: The Criticality of Information Technology

Of late some have claimed that IT as applied to enterprise and institutional environments has
become commoditized and it is no longer a strategic asset. Such statements originating from
consultants, speakers, and magazine writers may well be off the mark. Although some commoditization has indeed occurred in the past ten years or so, in fact, it can be argued that not enough
commoditization has yet taken place in IT, and more is needed. A lot of IT remains an art rather
than a science: software solutions for a significant portion of a companys functions tend to be oneof-a-kind developments rather than being off-the-shelf standardized solutions. Furthermore, business demands required to support a service/consumer economy rely even more deeply than ever on
having detailed real-time market and marketing information related, but not limited, to customer
trends, needs, wishes, ability to pay, history, order taking, order tracking, supply-chain, physical
* When we use the term information technology, we mean the entire corporate activity and function related to
computing, networking, and storage. This includes the people, the assets, the systems, the software, the applications, the practice, and the principles related to this function.

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AN: 233314 ; Minoli, Daniel.; Enterprise Architecture A to Z : Frameworks, Business Process Modeling, SOA, and
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