The meeting explored the considerations affecting the business architectures of enterprises using external IT services, particularly in the context of Cloud Computing.
Cloud Computing is currently a hot topic, because of its potential to deliver greater efficiencies and to enable new business paradigms. It is based on the provision of IT services by specialist provider companies. Service-oriented enterprise architecture has been the subject of work by The Open Group SOA Work Group, which is developing an SOA reference architecture, and the Cloud Work Group aims to make this the basis of its recommended architecture for enterprises using Cloud Computing.
The meeting reviewed presentations and discussions from the Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference Plenary: "Business Architecture – Extending EA to the Enterprise", the "Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture" conference stream, and the "Taking the Business Decision to Use Cloud Computing" conference stream, as the basis for discussing the following questions.
- What is a business architecture?
- How can service orientation improve business architectures?
- How can Cloud Computing improve business architectures?
- Where does Cloud not apply?
- To what extent is SOA an enabler for Cloud deployment?
