It is of immense importance for the organizations to understand deeply the importance of a good enterprise architectural management. Enterprise architecture is basically organizing logic, proactively and holistically, for business processes. It also emits instant response to the disruptive market forces by identifying the change, with respect to the business vision. Therefore, there is a need for designing, planning, and governing of enterprise architecture, with a solid framework, known as TOGAF (The open group architecture framework). This high level framework of design is divided into four basic levels, known as:
- Business architecture—Defining governance and business strategy along with key organizational business processes.
- Application architecture—This provides the much needed prerequisites for the individual system, yet to be deployed. It also maps the interaction between the different application systems and its associated connection with the organizational core business processes.
- Data architecture—This defines the complex structure of the organizational logical and physical data assets and its relation to other data management resources.
- Technology architecture—This defines the synchronization between the hardware, software, and its associated network infrastructure. It supports the mission critical business and IT applications.
TOGAF, was started in the year 1995 by “The Open Group”, and as of today its 80% of “Global 50” organizations and over 60% Fortune 500 companies, have come under the fold of TOGAF. With the help of TOGAF, organizations can design a robust IT infrastructure, which is highly adaptive to the business requirements.
Table of Contents
Some salient features of TOGAF
- It is the most potent tool to develop the business houses long term IT strategy, which is in line with its vision and supports core business strategies.
- Based on TOGAF standards, technology, and application roadmap can be created to steer the organization towards its goals.
- A TOGAF module also guides the Enterprise Architects to ensure hassle free functioning of IT and IT enabled end to end processes.
- A TOGAF certified professional is well versed in designing the IT architecture strategy, which includes the survey of the present picture and desired road map for strategy.
- A detailed portfolio management can be conducted to determine the IT health and infrastructure of the organization.
- TOGAF certified professionals are amongst the top contributors in the organizational governance committee or stakeholder committee. They make the final decisions on the standards and policies related to IT, in the organization.
- They are the ones to implement change management in the organization, which means versioning of the new variant of the technology, in the most feasible manner.
- Even aspirants in IoT, will be immensely benefitted from the course content of TOGAF certification.
TOGAF providing additional focus on latest digital trends
TOGAF contains specific set of tools and standards, which is designed to lubricate the adoption of new digital trends in the market. It complements the enhancement of business architecture along with Agile enterprise architecture. It does provide practical guidance on how to use and adapt the organization against new trends. It provides a sound business modelling, which is extremely useful in maintaining organizational strategic goals. TOGAF is meant to provide practical guidance to the organization to steer through the challenges of the digital era transformations. Since, the benefit from IT and IT related resources are optimized by TOGAF standards; it clearly earns valuable revenue for the organization. With the usage of its standards, the IT processes gets leaner which means, “Zero”, wasteful activity, leading to more revenue. It is needless to say that TOGAF professionals enjoy a celebrity status, within an organization. They enjoy enhanced industry credibility and wider career opportunities. On successful completion of the course, professionals have the option of working for manufacturing, banks and of course IT industries.
This formal business driven architecture to business, is the need of the hour for organizations, which they can obtain from TOGAF certification training. It doses enhance the business capability planning and develop high level security architecture. For the latest information on the register of tools, one may refer to, “The Open Group Register”. The curriculum of TOGAF oversees formal background qualification for the first 2 levels, where self study is an option. Thereafter in the Foundation or Level 1, a detailed course structure is designed to impart knowledge of Enterprise Architecture and its core concepts. Level II certification tests the candidate’s analytical skills and application of their knowledge to current trendy business problems. However, one must choose its technology partner very carefully, only after analyzing their past credentials.