Last week, Gartner Inc released its the 2009 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools report. Led by Robert A. Handler and Chris Wilson, the new Magic Quadrant provides an up to date and broad coverage of currently available EA software.

According to the authors of the report ‘“In both favorable and adverse economic conditions, organizations need visibility into their businesses. By enabling the creation, structuring and analysis of multiple aspects of enterprise architecture (EA), EA tools go far in fulfilling this need”.

It’s been more than 5 years since we launched Architecture and Governance Magazine, and the time has come for me to align my thought leadership efforts more closely with my day job(s).  A&G has grown into a great thought leadership publication and user community and under George Paras’ guidance A&G will continue to provide you some of the best thought leadership and best practices articles in the strategic IT planning and Enterprise Architecture space.

While uncertainty in near term economic conditions continues, there appears to be a light on the horizon. With the likely recovery of business activity in the next few quarters, now is the time to seize the initiative on smart technology investment.

Recently, I had the chance to talk with Frank Malta, the Chief Architect of drug manuacturer Merck.  Frank’s EA team has been eagerly pursuing a vision of enterprise wide business capability modeling for a number of years and has generated quite a bit of success.  

Brian Burke, an Enterprise Architect with Gartner, has posted an interesting video on YouTube discussing the relationship between EA and the CFO.  He asserts that in the current economic environment, it is critical for EAs and CFOs to work closely together.

And while CFOs are sometimes mystified by the deliberations of EA, there are common areas of interest.  Namely reducing costs, measuring business performance, and driving business growth.

The notion of outsourcing IT functionality is nothing new.  But moving a strategic capability such as enterprise architecture to an outsource provider sounds like a questionable proposition at best.  Never the less, a number of service providers are active in this market, selling services that range from EA organizational strategy, to one-time architectural development, to full on EA service outsourcing.

I'm excited about the line up of next month's Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit.  I've been attending EA events from Gartner for the past half decade, and they continue to provide value to me, both in thought leadership and networking.

It’s hard for me to believe that the magazine we started two years ago to educate and popularize new concepts for aligning IT strategies with business demands has grown to a circulation of twelve thousand subscribers and has become a voice of confidence for many emerging enterprise architecture and governance programs. But with this issue, I believe we have accomplished that and more. I am pleased to announce that Architecture and Governance magazine has garnered another strong endorsement of our vision with our new partnership with Gartner.