I was sitting at home watching TV the other evening when a commercial came on the screen that blew me way. It depicted the life and times of an old gas station, sitting at the foot of snow-capped mountains—an American outpost where the prairie meets the Rockies. As the time-lapse images progressed over the next minute, the station was demolished and rebuilt at least four times in those sixty seconds, each bringing us closer to a picture of the 21st century oil economy. And then the most unexpected thing happened.

For the third year, Architecture & Governance Magazine has undertaken a major survey of the IT community to understand its changing perspectives on strategy, process, politics, and the evolving role of the enterprise architect. This year, 401 readers completed the survey over a seven-day period in June. Some of the results were expected—following trends we have observed in years past. But some were quite startling—in particular, the declining relevance of the enterprise architecture process among its more quantifiable brethren.

There has been no shortage of articles and blogs recently talking about the lack of success that companies are having with service-oriented architecture (SOA). While many people have seen the technology adoption curves from Gartner that show that all new technologies go through a “trough of disillusionment,” it still doesn’t prevent many people from proclaiming that all of the hype was unjustified and asking the question, “Does SOA really matter?”

Building a city without a plan will likely result in confusion, increased expenditures, and sub-optimal results. Similarly, in order to build an effective and efficient IT plan across an agency or multiple government agencies, it is critical to develop a master plan. This master plan is called enterprise architecture (EA).

IT leadership and EA teams struggle with how to effectively engage business leadership regarding application systems that do not adhere to architectural standards or technology strategy. A simple technique can be used to effectively illustrate when existing systems do not fit with current standards or strategic IT road maps, as well as to: 

Policy-based Governance Helps Security Take Its Rightful Place as Just Another Part of Your SOA Infrastructure

Haven’t we all caught ourselves thinking of security as primarily a technical problem? Recall the days when we asked, “How do I implement a PKI to secure my Web applications?” For security folks, those were the days. However, there’s been a sea change in the industry since those simpler times.

A&G sat down with Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis, the authors (along with IEEE Fellow Hal Abelson) of Blown To Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion (www.bitsbook.com).

The authors paint a profound picture of the risks and rewards of our techno-enhanced future. In particular, we wanted to get their insights on the implications of ever-accelerating technological power on the legacy processes of the enterprise.

I have recently had several interesting conversations with EA teams that have been assigned, for the first time, to support their companies’ annual strategy, planning, and budgeting activities. A common theme emerged: their leadership teams justified the assignment with the hope that enterprise architects would bring a broader enterprise perspective to the table, a perspective that does not normally exist in the frequently parochial worlds of business units, operational teams, and development groups.