WHITE PAPER

The Enterprise Architect

of Tomorrow

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WHITE PAPER

The Enterprise Architect

of Tomorrow

CONTENT

P3 Introduction

P4 Factors Shaping the Role of Enterprise Architects

P6 Five Traits of Tomorrow’s Enterprise Architect

P12 How to Develop These Five Traits as an EA

P14 Conclusion
White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Introduction
This white paper will:
An Enterprise Architect’s (EA) role is elaborate
and extremely dynamic. They deliver great value
• Explain the factors that shape
to an enterprise — cutting down IT complexity and
costs by aligning concerns, technology tools, and
the role of the EAs
strategic business goals. EAs spent vast amounts
• Describe the five most important
of time producing exhaustive, idealistic plans based
on excessive amounts of analysis, slow timelines, traits high-performing EAs must
and rigid conceptual models. Such plans were often possess
impractical to execute and were less adaptable to
the changing business environment. • Offer practical insights for
developing and applying the five
But the rapid expansion of the technologies and
traits
digital methodologies, including cloud native, agile
and DevOps practices, as well as the shift from
monolithic to microservices have created a need for
a more flexible, data-driven, and pragmatic enterprise
architecture. Business success is suddenly being dictated
by new drivers such as digitization and agility, which
has forced traditional EA practices into obsolescence.
To be successful, the EAs of tomorrow must develop
the knowledge and skills to stay relevant in the age
of digital and business transformation. They are the
new superstars for driving strategic IT changes in
the enterprise. The EAs who own the right traits will
enable their enterprises to scale up and quickly meet
the speed and demands required by digital
transformation.

By becoming data-driven, agile minded, and forward-

thinking, the EAs of the future will be acknowledged for
their significant contribution for invaluable IT insights
and the execution of the strategic IT vision.

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Factors Shaping the Role of Enterprise Architects

The practice of enterprise architecture has changed cloud must be top of mind, with EAs as the glue that
drastically, from a supporting one into a leading one, helps tie all disparate IT threads together.
since it first emerged in the late 1980s. As enterprises
strive to become more agile, the role of IT has changed. In a cloud native environment, the large number of
IT is now perceived as a key contributor to business granular components scaling at an exponential rate (e.g.
enablement whereas it was once seen as a cost center. Amazon’s website uses more than 100,000 microservices)
It is now less about individual technologies, and more makes it difficult to inventory these components
about technology-enabled business models and manually, track their relationship to business capabilities,
solutions. and visualize their dependency to other components.
Increased incidents of cloud configuration mistakes
Enterprises no longer expect their EAs to be focused cause unexpected outages and take longer to analyze
on IT standards, structure, and control, but rather want and solve in an obscured IT landscape.
them to fulfill the business needs of flexibility, innovation,
and collaboration. In addition to the conventional Furthermore, the cloud native environment is
challenges of managing and controlling the IT characterized by decentralized teams, which makes
landscape, new challenges such as cybersecurity it difficult to share critical information due to the
and expanding cloud sprawl have also emerged. This unavailability of suitable processes and efficient tools
adds to the EAs' responsibilities and simultaneously to support those processes. All this has a detrimental
provides more opportunities to contribute to the success impact on the whole IT decision making process and has
of the enterprise. the potential to snowball into catastrophic decisions for
the business. The success of cloud native will to a large
One such technology from which hardly any organization extent depend on how enterprises create transparency
has remained untouched is cloud transformation. As IT of their hybrid IT (on-premise and cloud IT) landscape
infrastructure progressively moves towards the cloud, for stakeholders and promote a collaborative culture
enterprises need to understand not only the business to meet changing fundamentals in technology and
value of developing and deploying cloud native business. On the next page, Table 1 lists some changes to
applications but also how to deal with the strategic the IT landscape caused by cloud transformation and the
IT management challenges in multi-cloud and hybrid challenges it poses for EAs.
cloud environments. Enterprise architecture for the

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Table 1
Challenges of Moving from an On-premise to Cloud Native IT Environment

On-premise IT Cloud Native IT Resulting Challenges

• Lesser number of • A large number of • Managing complexity of

applications and IT applications and IT business and IT relationship
components components
• Monitoring dependencies of
• A few hundred IT • Tens of thousands of cloud components
components with slow granular cloud components,
system changes microservices, VMs, • Tracking violations
interfaces etc.

• Takes a few days to a week • Takes approximately 30 • Keeping inventory up to date

to commission a new server seconds to launch a new
server in AWS cloud • Avoiding human error in data
management

• Preventing the accumulation

of shadow IT

• Small number of centralized • Many decentralized teams • Sharing information to

teams collaborate across silos

Source: LeanIX GmbH

Considering the above challenges, EAs need to develop • Bridging an enterprise’s current and future state
their abilities to be successful in creating value to the objectives
enterprise and stay relevant in these tumultuous times.
Some of the areas where EAs can add value are: • Managing current cloud-based systems and ensuring
that disparate cloud systems fit with the legacy
systems

• Prepare IT better for the future to adapt faster to the

changes with minimal disruptions and costs

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Five Traits of Tomorrow’s Enterprise Architect

There are five characteristics the enterprise architects of tomorrow must possess if they are to be
successful. These traits include the ability to be strategic and think like a business leader, be agile,
embrace data to make decisions, and be an EA evangelist within the organization (see Figure 1).

Figure 1
Five Traits of Tomorrow’s Enterprise Architect

1. Strategic IT Decision Driver

2. Tech-Savvy Business Leader

3. Agile Thinker

4. Data-Driven Decision Maker

5. Evangelist

Source: LeanIX GmbH

Strategic IT Decisions Driver

EAs need to develop a strong understanding of business In the past, some EAs invested a disproportionate
and IT to be successful in executing their responsibilities. amount of time documenting information and collecting
They must be strategic and forward-thinking, yet their hordes of data for the sake of collecting it. They used
decisions must be rooted in an in-depth analysis of the static spreadsheets that never seemed to be current.
micro and macro technological changes impacting As a result, the data actively decreased in relevance,
their enterprise. As a strategic decision-maker, EA but EAs still used aging data to perform IT planning.
must forecast the potential outcomes of the various For incorporating an IT change, EAs would go back and
technological decisions and must weigh them against begin the same inefficient and ineffective process again.
business value and risk factors. Such mundane processes hold EAs back from realizing
their real potential in an environment of high agility and
competitiveness.

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

EAs of the future must track systems and processes future state of their target IT architecture quickly while
that exist and keep a sharp lookout for the imminent understanding the needs of the business. These EAs not
challenges and opportunities ahead. They must quickly only propose and investigate possible resolutions but
grasp, store, structure, and analyze information that remain helpful and accessible, offering supplemental
could help solve an oncoming problem or even prevent support until a solution is reached.
one before it occurs. They must develop a long-term

EBSCO Industries Inc. (EBSCO), the leading provider of

premium information, research databases, e-journals,
magazine subscriptions, e-books, and discovery
services to libraries of all kinds, embraced enterprise
architecture within their organization. EBSCO needed
to align its business units with IT operations, which
required documenting the holistic IT landscape and
visualize it with an interactive view.

EBSCO used static spreadsheets and Gantt charts

for documenting and planning their IT needs, which
resulted in large management and maintenance
overheads. They frequently missed important pieces
of information that would enable them to perform
an objective analysis. It quickly became apparent
enterprise architects needed a data-driven tool to
track the IT inventory and help drive their analysis for
planning and making decisions.

In a short span of 18 months, EBSCO built a single

source of truth for enterprise architecture by fully
automating its data collection and reporting
processes using LeanIX EAM. This has provided
increased visibility while aligning all the business
units with the IT landscape. In addition, teams now
Read Now
have a stronger sense of ownership for the company’s
overall digital transformation. The LeanIX solution
also provided EBSCO with more flexibility and agility
by breaking down the silos that impeded its ability
to fully utilize its IT environment. A new dialogue
has emerged in which the EA team also can now
provide business value and risk data, and technical
and functional fitness metrics to offer guidance for
strategic decisions, asset management, and roadmap
prioritization.

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Tech-Savvy Business Leader

Enterprise IT architects play a vital role as visionaries The microservices architecture develops complex
and technology masters who help shape and implement application software from small, individual applications
mission-critical projects and efforts. In the past, that communicate with each other using language-
more generalized IT experts who provided higher- independent application programming interfaces
level technical oversight and guidance for projects (APIs). Companies run into trouble if they are unable to
might become a successful EA. But in the digital age, scale a monolithic architecture developed over time,
when every company eventually becomes a software especially if their architecture is difficult to upgrade or
company, EAs have to have a deep understanding of the maintenance becomes too complex. Microservices can
technologies, and specifically the opportunities and risks address this problem, as they break down complex tasks
they bring, to stay ahead of the competition. into smaller processes that work independently of each
other.
The EAs of the future must not only be aware of the
availability of industry-relevant APIs, microservices, and However, it is extremely important to define a
emerging technologies, but also need to understand target architecture before beginning to implement
how a proposed service might improve or negatively microservices. Otherwise, the IT landscape may end up
impact the company. Where EAs of the past would have devolving into chaos and exhibit worse properties than
nominally researched possible solutions and handed it the existing monolithic applications. Tech-savvy EAs give
off to the prospective team to resolve, tech-savvy EAs clear-cut advice and implement a framework to benefit
of tomorrow are in close continual contact with CIOs, from microservices, service oriented architecture,
application leaders, and IT teams, educating themselves DevOps, or any other emerging trends.
on the technical mechanics of each project.

For example, one of the key architectural changes

happening is microservices. EAs will undoubtedly have
to give well-founded advice on this framework, and its
possible benefits to their company (see Figure 2).

Figure 2
Monolithic vs Microservices Architecture

Monolothic Architecture Microservices Architecture

User User
interface interface
Micro- Micro-
service service

Data
Business
Access
Logic
Layer Micro- Micro-
service service

Data Base Data Base Data Base Data Base Data Base

Source: LeanIX GmbH

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Agile Thinker
EAs are slowly moving away from a supporting role to peers. They also have 2,604 times faster ‘time to recover
a leading one. More and more EAs are participating in from incidents’ and a 7 times lower change failure rate.
and directing their enterprise's business prioritization,
strategic roadmap planning and optimization, portfolio Once shifted over from the “Ivory Tower” mindset to an
management, and product management activities. agile mindset, EAs can actively map out systems and
processes that foster high project deliverable rates,
Agility has become a key characteristic of top- generate quick results, and produce critical business
performing EAs of tomorrow. An important EA goal is outcomes while supporting the important requirements
to implement enterprise-wide agile methodologies like security, data privacy, and compliance.
and agile operating models to speed up software
deployment timelines. For instance, EAs can explore Their approaches are complementary. The
agile development using scrum frameworks for harmonization between architecture and agile teams
completing complex projects. Originally designed for can contribute to the delivery of successful projects
software development projects, it works well for any aligned to corporate strategies. Figure 3 shows the EA
complex, innovative scope of work. approach for digital transformation, embedded into
agile development methods. The macro cycle defines
Over the years, agile software development the architecture of the entire enterprise while in the
accentuated by DevOps methodologies has empowered micro cycle, single functions are implemented and
enterprises to develop and release services at a rapid tested. An ideal architecture provides the EA room
rate. According to a recent State of DevOps report, for new ideas without considering legacy systems or
high-performing enterprises deploy code to production strategic restrictions. Afterward, the real architecture is
208 times more frequently than their low-performing derived from the ideal architecture

Figure 3
Agile Enterprise Architecture for Digital Transformation

Digital Business
Strategy

Transformation
Strategy
Business
Review
Model

Ideal Macro Architecture Micro

Testing
Architecture Cycle Backlog Cycle

Real
Architecture Built

Service
Current
selection
Architecture

Source: Enterprise Architectures for the Digital Transformation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, David Goerzig and Thomas Bauernhansl, 2017

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Data-Driven Decision Maker “Data will become a strategic asset to the

The sheer number of assets that EAs are expected to adaptive enterprise and analytics will enable
manage and control has increased exponentially with
the organization to distinguish the signals from
the growing granularity of application and solution
the noise and focus on outcomes, resulting in
assets. This explosion in IT assets has turned traditional
business ROI.”
EA drawing tools obsolete. The EAs of tomorrow must Björn Goerke, Former Chief
make their decisions based on current data to ensure Technology Officer (CTO) of SAP
they can execute upon actionable business outcomes.
Data-driven decisions help leadership make the right
investments and ensure the organization is working on capabilities on real-time information, LeanIX provides
the most impactful tasks to improve its competitive EAs with analytics on a visual dashboard to enable them
edge. to make data-driven decisions quickly.

High performing EAs are on top of up-to-date Figure 4 shows the customizable LeanIX dashboard
analytics, prove hypotheses with data, regularly A/B with key architecture KPIs. The flexible dashboards
test the practicality of current systems, and make assist organizations with turning data stored in their EA
decisions only from admissible data. In today’s world of inventories into actionable insights. The user-friendly
information overload, the real task for EAs is to filter the functionality gives LeanIX users fast and easy access to
data, determine what is useful to them, and use it in a new and pending actions and information, simplifying
meaningful way. workflows and creating more efficient processes and
robust actions. The dashboard allows a swift real-
The SaaS-based LeanIX Enterprise Architecture time overview of the most important statistics of your
Management has revolutionized the enterprise architecture. This results in developing measurable
architecture practice of more than 300 enterprises improvements in the EA initiatives. Without access to
around the globe. By providing a flexible data model, current EA data, enterprises tend to suffer from bad
making it easier to collaborate between different decision making, lost communications, neglected issues,
stakeholders, and delivering instant reporting slow response times, and disorganized efforts.

Figure 4
LeanIX Dashboard Illustrates Key Architecture KPIs

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Evangelist
Whereas EAs of the past were seen as data collectors in 2018 while Kubernetes adoption has grown to 48%
creating far-flung models for various project teams, EAs enterprises, up from 27% percent in the same period
of the future must see a benefit in constant application as stated in the Right Scale 2019 State of the Cloud
changes - and be able to convince teams to test out Report. Forward-thinking EAs of tomorrow will take this
new processes regularly. Evangelistic EAs can select information, research how cloud native technologies will
one important topic that would benefit the company provide opportunities or threats to their organization,
whether it is cloud native transformation, AI, DevOps, IoT, build a broad understanding of the business impacts
microservices, etc., and champion and strongly advocate of these emerging technologies, expose the challenges
for its cause. they will pose to the enterprise, and devise solutions to
tackle those challenges. By thoroughly researching the
One hot topic for most industries is cloud transformation. technology and the resulting ideation, evangelical EAs
Cloud native technologies such as containers and can provide both IT leaders and business leaders with
Kubernetes are continuously rising in adoption across more than just a list of “cool” set of technology ideas
a wide range of industries. Docker containers are (see Table 2).
now being used by 57% of enterprises, up from 49%

Table 2
Differences Between Past and Future Enterprise Architects

Enterprise Architect of the Past Enterprise Architect of the Future

Deals mostly with on-premise IT Deals with hybrid IT (on-premise and cloud IT)

Is considered a technical professional with little Has mastered both technical as well as business
business acumen acumen

Is stuck in obsolete practices of enterprise Continuously incorporates new methodologies of

architecture doing things faster and cheaper

Is more concerned about controlling and Has eyes on achieving business goals. Controlling
standardization and standardization are still important but are
not allowed to interfere with business agility

Uses legacy EA tools, more focused on drawing Uses modern data-driven EA tools with relevant
features with almost no integration capabilities to APIs to connect to the broader IT management
other tools ecosystem

Source: LeanIX GmbH

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

How to Develop These Five Traits as an EA

Having understood the factors that are shaping enterprise architecture and the traits that will be
required to be successful in this new world, let’s explore how these essential traits of the future EA
can be cultivated.

Be customer-centric Use modern data-driven EA tools

Enterprise architects should develop a practice that is Be sure to employ EA tools, which offer real-time
customer-driven, where different business units within insights and provides contextualized information for
the enterprise collaborate to innovate operational stakeholders. A tool that can be easily integrated
models, products, and services. It requires interactive with other IT management tools will make it easier to
and proactive services, individualized customer collaborate across business units and functions.
understanding, and the elimination of organizational
information silos.

Appreciate the totality of architectures

Enterprise architects should align with other sets of
architects such as cloud architects, solution architects,
Emphasize a data culture and domain architects to benefit from their expertise
Not all data is useful for business decisions. Real-time, and understanding of their particular niche. Similarly, by
relevant metrics are an EA’s best tool to detect faults leveraging EA expertise, other architects can improve the
and areas for improvement. Ensuring all relevant data outcomes of their activities by aligning with enterprise-
is captured for EA decision making based on a flexible wide efforts. Cloud architects, for example, can design
data model will go a long way in furthering an overall better cloud applications, get faster approvals, and have
data strategy. storage capabilities in place for enterprise data and
services.

Embrace agility Be a prolific communicator

Enterprise architects should shed the old mindset of Regularly check in with key stakeholders to understand
where the emphasis was on control while flexibility their explicit and implicit needs. Schedule review
and innovation took a back seat. It’s time to maintain meetings as often as needed. Use the language of the
a balance between risk-taking and risk mitigation to stakeholders to convey viewpoints and perspectives
support innovation while ensuring compliance and easily.
cost optimization.

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Continuously look for areas of improvement Stay abreast of industry trends

Ask questions like, “Are these applications still Attend conferences in person or virtually to update
relevant?” or “Is this system working?” or “How I can I yourself about recent innovations and trends in the
make this system better?” on a regular basis. Compare industry. Analyze how these developments may impact
yourself to other organizations in the industry to see your business and IT organization. Spread awareness
where your business is not performing as well and may among company stakeholders and brace yourself for
have addressable gaps. Assess how you can make a these changes. If required, you should enroll in relevant
difference to propel your organization to become an university tech courses to stay abreast of emerging
industry leader. industry standards or take EA certification classes and
apply constructive knowledge to EA projects.

The top EA-related certifications that will help

strengthen your resume are:

• AWS Certified Solution Architect

• Axelos ITIL Master certification
• CISSP Information Systems Security Architecture
Professional (CISSIP-ISSAP)
• Dell EMC Proven Professional Cloud architect training
and certification
• EC Council Certified Network Defense Architect
(CNDA)
• Google Professional Cloud Architect
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• Professional Cloud Solutions Architect Certification
• Red Hat Certified Architect
• Salesforce Certified Technical Architect (CTA)
• The Open Group TOGAF 9 Certification
• The Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA)
• Virtualization Council Master Infrastructure Architect
certification

Get started today

Pick one current project where you can apply the five
traits for high-performing EAs. Get buy-ins from the
stakeholders and make a measurable difference for
your company sooner rather than later.

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White Paper The Enterprise Architect of Tomorrow

Conclusion

EAs with tunnel vision on long-term plans and conceptual among various communities of stakeholders. They strive
processes don’t provide as much value to their teams to master the five traits expected of EAs to make a
and underutilize their potential. The EAs of the future measurable impact on their enterprises. Above all, they
architect the organization’s IT landscape to meet understand the fact that the world is not static, and their
the requirements of the digital age. They understand role will continuously evolve with the changing business
business and IT to drive a transformation conversation needs.

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