By 2016, 30 percent of enterprise architecture programs will be collaborations between business and IT, revealing a fundamental shift in IT, says new Gartner research. This is an increase from 9 percent in early 2011.
EA, traditionally an IT practice, has been evolving for several years to become aligned with business strategy. Several trends have inspired the evolution, including business users making technology decisions, increased management pressure on EA to demonstrate business value and continued emergence of new disciplines to enhance collaboration.
“It’s no longer about IT for IT’s sake, or EA for EA’s sake, but about how EA is enabling the business to run, grow and transform,” says Betsy Burton, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner. “Right now those who are still focused on IT are in the minority.”
“Enterprise architects have woken up to the fact that a collaborative relationship with the business is essential to their success. These things aren’t independent, they’re interdependent,” says Philip Allega, research vice president at Gartner. “Enterprise architects are lifting their heads out of the work of creating deliverables in EA to think about ‘consumability’ and the results of that consumption on the organization’s future.”
More information is available in Gartner’s report "Beyond the Tipping Point: EA is Strategic."
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter at @va1va1entine or via email at valerie.valentine@sourcemedia.com.
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