IT Infrastructure and Enterprise Architecture - An overview

Introduction

In this article, let me explain you what is enterprise architecture in a very simplified way. It can be made any complicated as well. Starting with IT infrastructure, then process, principles, data model,  current and future states, road maps etc.

Enterprise

Let's think of making a new business from legacy, which has very less infrastructure and departments to start understanding what is an enterprise. Basically, any small enterprise may have a human resource department, operations department, finance department, product or service delivery department, procurement department, IT department and marketing and sales department. Let's limit the number of departments in the organization to better understand the enterprise. In practical, we may not be able to limit it. We made the organization, now onwards enterprise. Now let's think of this organization's activities and how IT comes into picture. Each department may have some relations with the others. Day to day operations of this enterprise needs a lot of processes to follow. These activities are either physical or intellectual in nature. Now we have a requirement of process automation. How do we address this? Since there are many departments, many locations, many people and various process and communications, enterprise requires some tools to help the interactions easy and automatic. There arise the requirement of IT tools in each department. But we know that there are a lot of shared resources, data and systems. Now there required a system in which all the departments should communicate each other as and when required. Also, required data should be shared for various purposes. 

In order to achieve this, we can add common resources such as user data centre, ERP tools, CRM tools, document management systems, communication tools etc. In order to deploy those, we require personal computers, physical servers, networks, data centre, internet etc. We have many departments and now need to think of the communication, availability, security, redundancy, accessibility, usability etc. In order to achieve those, we have to make required software and communication channels to ensure seamless interaction possible.

If we have one physical office the required infrastructure, networks, software etc are limited to one physical location. But assume we have 3 such offices in different locations. For better management of three offices, all of them should be under one common enterprise network, usually VPN. Now under secure VPN, all locations are in the same network and communications are seamless.

Now we can check what we have done so far: Three offices with similar operations having similar structure having similar IT infrastructure established for various activities to perform securely and efficiently. Now we have set up an enterprise with IT infrastructure, which has various components physically as well as digitally. We can say, we have made an enterprise. This is lightly explained here for easy understanding purpose only. Enterprise may have various components such as personal computing devices, data centre, internet connectivity, multiple networks including cloud infrastructure or network, various software etc 

Enterprise Architecture (Artifacts)

 Once you understand Enterprise, let's move ahead and understand the enterprise architecture Artifacts (EAA).  EAA has defined set of standards and is systematic. EAA consists of  Enterprise Data Model, Architectural Review Process, Architectural Principles, current and future state architecture standards and matrices and strategies and roadmaps.

Enterprise architecture in a big picture is artifacts on Business strategy, Business process, IT Strategy, Business capabilities and IT Solutions.

This article simply explained what is enterprise and Enterprise  architecture in a very simplified manner.