Tool Selection Guide

An enterprise architecture (EA) establishes the organization-wide roadmap to achieve an organization’s mission through optimal performance of its core business processes within an efficient information technology (IT) environment. Simply stated, enterprise architectures are “blueprints ” for systematically and completely defining an organization’s current (baseline) or desired (target) environment. Enterprise architectures are essential for evolving information systems and developing new systems that optimize their mission value. This is accomplished in logical or business terms (e.g., mission, business functions, information flows, and systems environments) and technical terms (e.g., software, hardware, communications), and includes a transition plan for transitioning from the baseline environment to the target environment. If defined, maintained, and implemented effectively, these blueprints assist in optimizing the interdependencies and interrelationships among the business operations of the enterprise and the underlying IT that support these operations. It has shown that without a complete and enforced EA (Strategic) Business Units of the enterprise run the risk of buying and building systems that are duplicative, incompatible, and unnecessaril