Benefits of Enterprise Architecture

Once in a while, whenever I get time, I browse certain web sites to check whether anything new has come . I know RSS is a great mechanism to keep oneself updated on what's new on almost all web sites. But still I like this random check on my favorite sites.

One of my such favorite sites is the MIT CISR web site. This site hosts the working papers and research briefings, which are freely accessible. Today while I was going through them, I found one research briefing on Benefits of Enterprise Architecture. I found it very useful as it has given a list of both technology-related and business-related benefits of Enterprise Architecture.

The authors Jeanne Ross and Peter Weill, have described three types of technology-related benefits: IT costs, IT responsiveness and risk management. IT costs benefits include reduction in IT operations unit costs (cost of services such as helpdesk, network capacity and email) and application maintenance cost. IT responsiveness benefit includes reduction in develpment time. Finally, risk management benefits includes the following ones: reduced business risk, improved regulatory compliance, increased disaster tolerance and reduced security breaches.

The business-related benefits include the following:

• shared business platforms - greater data sharing and integrated process standards
• senior management and business unit management satisfaction
• strategic business impact - operational excellence, customer intimacy, product leadership and strategic agility
  

The research briefing also provides details about how maturity level of enterprise architecture help organizations grow these benefits.