Many organizations are interested in exploring Enterprise Architecture methods in order to improve alignment between the group’s business strategy and the delivery of technology solutions to enable the execution of that strategy. But implementing and managing an EA process can seem like a daunting endeavor due to the complexity of typical EA frameworks.
Centric's Enterprise Architecture Framework (CEAF)
To address these concerns, Centric has developed our own EA framework (Centric’s Enterprise Architecture Framework or CEAF). CEAF combines and extends essential elements of the established EA frameworks such as Zachman and TOGAF. Why is CEAF a better alternative? Because we’ve made the EA implementation and ongoing governance process simpler, more practical, and easier to understand and operate.
What are the benefits of a properly implemented EA process?
- A repeatable means to improve the coordination and alignment of IT and business investments with the end result being efficient delivery of strategic initiatives.
- It provides the means to lower overall TCO across diverse IT Portfolios, including both project and application portfolios.
- Centric’s EA framework provides a standardized mechanism to prioritize the highest impact IT investments based on defined budget cycle frequency.
- EA enables the faster delivery of mission critical IT initiatives via the efficient reuse of application, data, and infrastructure standards.
- Over time your end state architecture becomes a reality and therefore your overall IT fabric becomes faster and easier to modify and update, simpler to maintain, and provide more competitive differentiation to your business.
Centric’s enterprise architecture experts are ready to assist your organization efforts to optimize its IT function by better aligning with business objectives via the following services:
- EA Advisory Services – our advisory services include: 1) executive mentoring designed to identify functional areas where EA principles may be beneficial, define roll-out and ongoing operational approaches, and provide insights into best practice, and 2) roadmap development involving the creation of a detailed roll out plan for implementation and ongoing governance of the EA.
- EA Implementation Services – an experienced team cyclically applies the CEAF process to define your future state environment by considering the four layers of an EA solution: Business Processes, Applications, Data, and Technology Architectures. To produce this future state vision typical activities include data modeling, policy and procedure documentation, data flow creation, and infrastructure standards. This also involves the creation and communication of governance standards and procedures with associated cross-divisional enforcement policies.
- EA Sourcing Services - Trained CEAF practitioners able to manage and direct your EA implementation as well as the ongoing operation of the EA process.
Why partner with Centric for your EA initiatives?
- Centric’s EA Framework is designed for practical implementation and governance of processes and practices needed to align the business and IT. It includes pre-built tools and templates needed to document all aspects of an EA implementation program including web-based tools to store, retrieve, and archive critical EA artifacts.
- Experienced resources capable of rolling out EA planning and governance processes across complex organizations.
- Centric’s broad technology capabilities coupled with our process and strategy expertise brings all the needed skills to properly assess your existing application and IT landscape to ultimately formulate the right future-state architecture.
