Enterprise Architecture Frameworks

Enterprise Architecture is the practice of applying a comprehensive and rigorous method for describing a current and/or future structure and behavior for an organization's processes, information systems, personnel and organizational sub-units, so that they align with the organization's core goals and strategic direction. Although often associated strictly with information technology, it relates more broadly to the practice of business optimization in that it addresses business architecture, performance management, organizational structure and process architecture as well.

The Practice of Enterprise Architecture involves developing an architecture framework to describe a series of "current", "intermediate" and "target" reference architectures and applying them to align change within the enterprise. Another set of terms for these are "as-is", "to-be" and the "migration plan".

These frameworks detail all relevant structure within the organization including business, applications, technology and data. This framework will provide a rigorous taxonomy and ontology that clearly identifies what processes a business performs and detailed information about how those processes are executed. The end product is a set of artifacts that describe in varying degrees of detail exactly what and how a business operates and what resources are required.

Casewise has built a unique library of Enterprise Architecture frameworks, all of which are highly regarded by many organizations and highly acknowledged by leading analyst companies. Theses frameworks have been designed specifically to help accelerate your organizational operations and projects easily and effectively.

ArchiMate

ArchiMate is a modelling technique ("language") for describing enterprise architectures. It presents a unified way of modelling enterprise architectures, integrating the various domains and describing them in an easily readable way.

Casewise Framework

The Casewise Framework builds upon the industry standard Zachman Framework to offer structure, templates and guidance for teams to create accurate, valuable enterprise architecture models. Combining the powerful principles of the framework with the truly extensible repository of Corporate Modeler , the ability to create a focused and efficient Enterprise Architecture becomes a realistic proposition.

DoDAF

Read more about DoDAF and our leading Government solution or contact us at government@casewise.com or call our Government Division at 1-888-98-DoDAF

Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA)

Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) is the Enterprise Architecture of a Federal Government. It provides a common methodology for information technology (IT) acquisition, use, and disposal in the Federal government.

The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) initiative identifies ways the federal government can simplify processes, reduce cost, and share information and resources across agencies and within the lines of business. Developed by the Office of Management and Budget, the FEA is a business-driven framework to deliver services that are more citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA)

Model-Driven Architecture (MDA™) is a software design approach that its sponsor, the Object Management Group (OMG), officially launched in 2001. MDA supports model-driven engineering of software systems. MDA provides a set of guidelines for structuring specifications expressed as models.

The MDA approach defines system functionality using a platform-independent model (PIM) using an appropriate Domain Specific Language. Then, given a Platform Definition Model (PDM) corresponding to CORBA, DotNet, the Web, etc., the PIM is translated to one or more platform-specific models (PSMs) that computers can run, using different Domain Specific Languages, or a General Purpose Language like Java, C#, Python, etc.

One of the main aims of the MDA is to separate design from architecture. As the concepts and technologies used to realize designs and the concepts and technologies used to realize architectures have changed at their own pace, decoupling them allows system developers to choose from the best and most fitting in both domains.

The design addresses the functional (use case) requirements while architecture provides the infrastructure through which non-functional requirements like scalability, reliability and performance are realized. MDA envisages that the platform independent model (PIM), which represents a conceptual design realizing the functional requirements, will survive changes in realization technologies and software architectures.

The Casewise MDA reference model kick starts your project with pre-defined templates. It gives you guidance and enables you to communicate your design results as HTML, Word document or you can maintain the data (create, delete, update) via the Web Portal, which provides you also Dashboard views for communicating the metrics (performance metric, critical success factors, compliance status,…)

Oasis

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

The Casewise OASIS extension allows organizations to deploy service architectures that follow the Principles of Channel Independence, Reusability and Replaceability. The result is a reduction in cost implementation whilst developing services and ultimately avoiding the 'application spaghetti'. This Best Practice promotes better service identification and rich service specifications which drive process driven service architectures and event driven architectures reducing the cost of implementation and service lifecycle management.

TOGAF

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is a leading Enterprise Architecture Framework which has a dynamic representation and provides a detailed step-by-step method on how to build, maintain, and implement Enterprise Architecture. Since the mid 1990’s, TOGAF has been continuously developed by representatives of some of the world’s leading IT customer and vendor organizations, working in The Open Group's Architecture Forum.

The architecture is typically modeled at four levels or domains; Business, Application, Data, Technology. A set of foundation architectures are provided to enable the architecture team to envision the current and future state of the architecture.

Having secured TOGAF™ certification for its globally adopted modeling software the Corporate Modeler Suite, Casewise is proud to announce the release of the Casewise TOGAF extension, the latest addition to its extensive and highly regarded library of models and frameworks.

Casewise has transformed the entire TOGAF Enterprise Edition Book into an easy and ready to use model providing both a graphical representation and full textual guidance of the TOGAF ADM (Architecture Development Method). The model offers a number of key features including:

Diagrams of the ADM
Built-in object associations
Detailed mappings to the Casewise (Zachman) Framework
Technical Reference Model (TRM)
Template diagrams and matrices

Download the Casewise TOGAF extension

Casewise Model Extension for NAF version 3

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance of 26 countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goals of the North Atlantic Treaty signed on the 4th April 1949. In accordance with the Treaty, the fundamental role of NATO is to safeguard the freedom and security of its member countries by political and military means.

The current NATO C3 System Architecture Framework v2 (NAF v2), issued by NATO in September 2004 provides guidance on describing communication and information systems (or C3 systems) through architectures whilst providing rules, guidance, and templates for developing and presenting architecture descriptions ensuring a common denominator for understanding, comparing, and integrating architectures in NATO. The application of the NAF is designed to enable architectures to contribute most effectively to acquiring and fielding cost-effective and interoperable military capabilities.

Whilst the NAF v2 continues to provide an effective basis for NATO associated architectural activity, further development of the document has become necessary. In particular, the NAF needs revision to cater for Capability development, Service orientation as required by NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC) and to provide support for NATO transformation.

The next generation framework, NAF v3 will therefore provide:

The ability to define views of architectural information in a more flexible way and support Stakeholders so that extensive analysis can be made to provide rationale for prioritization decision making
A standardized way of documenting NATO-wide business processes and provide support to Capability based planning
Critical support for the achievement of NNEC and NATO transformation by facilitating the move from a system-oriented paradigm to a service-oriented paradigm, and by identifying mechanisms to handle the complexity of the relationships within the NATO federation of systems in a holistic manner
A NAF Meta-Model (NMM) and repository to enable stakeholders and users to extract bespoke architecture information and make necessary analyses to support development, interoperability, acquisition or technical considerations
A complementary tool to NATO and National program management, contributing to reduction in cost overruns, risk reduction, and more efficient use of common funded budgets

In conjunction with the release of NAF version 3, the Casewise Model Extension for NAF v3 includes definitions of all the architectural elements alongside examples of how these are used. In addition, definitions, examples and templates of all the NATO Architecture Framework views are included, along with full explanatory details of the Architecture Management elements, processes and roles.

The benefits to adopting/implementing the Casewise Model Extension for NAF v3 are many and include:

Providing all the objects, property definitions and diagram templates you need, to enable you to accelerate your Enterprise Architecture activity
All examples are have been visualized within Corporate Modeler enabling you to easily understand how to model to NATO Architecture Requirements
Users of the framework also have the ability to output all elements within the model as an html web page allowing an easy to navigate reference guide
Your architecture is held within a leading Enterprise Architecture tool enabling you to take advantage of the powerful reporting, publishing and simulation tools which Corporate Modeler has to offer
A reduction in cost overruns, contract errors and the duplication of investment
Improved integration across all platforms
Agile acquisition and reduced time to bring capability into service
New projects can be scoped more accurately meaning fewer adverse ‘surprises’ and cost increases during implementation
Reduced development risks/costs for projects and a faster introduction meaning business benefits can be realized early on
Cost reduction through the introduction of standards and improved management of life-cycle costs
A more coherent portfolio of military capabilities alongside improved portfolio and program management
Avoidance of unnecessary costs in the overall investment program means less reliance on expensive ‘temporary’ workarounds caused by incomplete project implementations

IT City Planning

Based on the analogy of urban town planning, the Casewise IT City Planning model has been created to describe all of the domains within an organization and help improve business performance and agility.

Designed for organizations across all market sectors, the model is functional tool for business architects and those working within an enterprise architecture environment in helping to improve business and IT effectiveness.

The model is built around four key layers which form the core components of a typical enterprise:

The Business layer focuses on Business Process Analysis and describes an organizations primary business process
The Functional layer is a conceptual view of the functions hosted by different business lines in terms of IT systems allowing an organization to align its business and IT operations
The Application layers objective is to draw up a unique and comprehensive inventory
The Technical layer includes details both technological and hardware components enabling an asset list to be drawn up detailing all of the IT items within an organization

This four layered structure means business experts can help describe the organizational processes, architects can build a functional overview, IT experts will model the application cartography and technical experts can create an infrastructure map.

By implementing an IT City Planning project, organizations can improve the performance and agility of an IT operation and help detect any complexities and redundancies enabling for fast and concrete IT cost reductions to be made.

The model itself contains all IT City Planning Meta Model, a set of graphical representations, diagram templates and a real example. As a “ready-to-use” environment, the model allows organizations to quickly accelerate business and IT effectiveness projects.

Zachman Framework

The Zachman Framework is a framework for Enterprise Architecture which provides a formal and highly structured way of defining an enterprise. It uses a two-dimensional classification model based around the 6 basic communication interrogatives (What, How, Where, Who, When, and Why) intersecting 6 distinct model types which relate to stakeholder groups (Visionary, Owner, Designer, Builder, Implementer and Worker) to give a holistic view of the enterprise which is being modeled.

Originally conceived by John Zachman at IBM in the 1980’s, the framework is now a de facto world standard for expressing the basic elements of an Enterprise Architecture