Tune in to any news source and it is likely that just about any topic will somehow relate to the down economy. And, while we are all well aware that money is tight across all industries, it is now time for companies to consider how they can maximize their business value with minimal spending. Michael Keen writes in his latest column titled Business Technology Review on the value of enterprise architecture (EA) given the economic downturn.

Keen notes, “the essence of an enterprise architecture is that it lays out how information and IT enable the realization of the enterprise strategy, and it provides a framework for supporting and automating business processes using IT capabilities.”

In times of a down economy Keen identifies a few IT capabilities that will give companies a flexible, automated response to change. Among these tactics are model-based automation, “to define and manage IT services quickly and easily,” and SOA, “to enable the rapid assembly and integration of IT services.”

The premise of Keen’s analysis is that companies need enough visibility into their IT infrastructure to successfully operate and execute the services their business provides – or, as Metastorm asserts, aligning strategy with execution.

In addition to significant business benefits, companies are also looking to EA as a security investment. Dana Gardner recently reported on a panel of industry experts that focused on corporate security. Some of the panelists offered their thoughts on how enterprise security intersects with enterprise architecture. They agreed that with the imminence of regulations to monitor corporate operations (i.e. financial compliance and government reporting) and the increase in data breaches, companies must build an agile enterprise architecture that simplifies structures, considers security from the beginning, and ultimately protects the information transmitted throughout its organization.

While EA and SOA are likely to be a reoccurring topics as companies plan their IT investments, we thought Keen and Gardner presented some interesting trends that attest to the value companies realize in using EA tools.

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