An Enterprise Architect is responsible for updating and maintaining an organisation’s IT network and services. The Enterprise Architect also plays a role in digital transformation. In this article, we will delve into the role of the Enterprise Architect by analysing his or her responsibilities, daily tasks and importance within an organisation.
Role and responsibilities of an Enterprise Architect
The Enterprise Architect is responsible for everything related to enterprise architecture, services, software and hardware, supervising, updating and improving them. This entails the need to keep ahead of trends and technological innovations introduced on the market that can improve business processes.
The position of Enterprise Architect requires several years of experience in the IT field (5 to 10 years) and a degree in computer science or a related field and some specialisation and certification courses.
The tasks of an Enterprise Architect
The Enterprise Architect’s main task is to build a technological system that can support the company’s business strategy, thus having control over both the technical and strategic aspects.
Among the skills most in demand for this role are:
- Experience with SQL
- Knowledge of data sourcing
- Enterprise data management skills
- Knowledge of corporate strategy, audit and compliance
- Knowledge of cloud computing
- System architecture skills
- Ability to develop business strategies and solutions
An Enterprise Architect must therefore have developed all the above skills and be able to use them to understand business and technology needs in order to align these two needs and find the most suitable solution by linking business mission, strategy and processes with technology strategy.
In addition, Enterprise Architects must have the appropriate skills to talk to both technical developers and managers, relating to the various senior figures in both areas while staying up-to-date on both fronts
The task of the Enterprise Architect is to respond to the current and future needs of the organisation in an efficient, sustainable and adaptable manner.
An increasingly in-demand role
Organisations are evolving and facing the evolution towards digital on a daily basis. For this reason, organisations increasingly need professionals who can align the needs of new IT strategies, technologies and processes with broader business and corporate objectives, and who can reduce the complexities dictated by evolution while establishing robust and consistent technology processes across all areas and business units.
To perform all these tasks, it is essential to have the figure of the Enterprise Architect: a professional who knows how to transform the company’s needs and its business strategy into concrete and applicable solutions for the IT system architecture.
Enterprise Architecture activities have started to take off in the last 7 years with a peak in recruitment that increased by 75% in 2017, especially among large companies that are adopting a service-oriented architecture.
Why should organisations have an Enterprise Architect?
The Enterprise Architect is a role that manages to position itself halfway between IT and business, bridging the organisation’s various needs.
Having a global vision of both the corporate structure and the objectives that the organisation wants to pursue, that of the Enterprise Architect is a role that can be fundamental at a strategic level because it unites the needs and innovations of the IT world with those of business.
Good Enterprise Architecture management can reduce costs, increase the organisation’s flexibility and keep all the technological aspects of the company under control.
Enterprise Architect certifications
TOGAF
The TOGAF framework is a step-by-step method for developing an enterprise architecture using a set of tools. TOGAF seeks to be an approach to ‘rapid’ architectural development and effective governance. It does not prescribe the models that should be used to represent the architecture, but guides the process when creating an architecture.
ArchiMate® Certification
ArchiMate is a standard of The Open Group, defining an open and independent language for Enterprise Architecture that is supported by several tools. The language developed in ArchiMate enables Enterprise Architects to describe, analyse and visualise business relationships in a clear and unambiguous manner.
IT4IT™ Certification
The Open Group’s IT4IT™ Reference Architecture standard for IT business management. It uses a value chain approach to create a model of the functions that IT performs to help organisations identify the activities that contribute to business competitiveness.
Do you want to pursue a career as an Enterprise Architect or are you already a professional and want to obtain certification? We offer TOGAF training courses, discover our course calendar or write to us to request a consultation or receive more information!
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