Enterprise Architecture Patterns : Practical Solutions for Recurring IT-Architecture Problems

Every enterprise architect faces similar problems when designing and governing the enterprise architecture of a medium to large enterprise. Design patterns are a well-established concept in software engineering, used to define universally applicable solution schemes. By applying this approach to enterprise architectures, recurring problems in the design and implementation of enterprise architectures can be solved over all layers, from the business layer to the application and data layer down to the technology layer.

Inversini and Perroud describe patterns at the level of enterprise architecture, which they refer to as Enterprise Architecture Patterns. These patterns are motivated by recurring problems originating from both the business and the underlying application, or from data and technology architectures of an enterprise such as identity and access management or integration needs. The Enterprise Architecture Patterns help in planning the technological and organizational landscape of an enterprise and its information technology, and are easily embedded into frameworks such as TOGAF, Zachman or FEA.

This book is aimed at enterprise architects, software architects, project leaders, business consultants and everyone concerned with questions of IT and enterprise architecture and provides them with a comprehensive catalogue of ready-to-use patterns as well as an extensive theoretical framework to define their own new patterns.

Thierry Perroud has been Chief Enterprise Architect of the Federal Office of Information Technology, Systems and Telecommunication of the Swiss government (FOITT) since 2006. In this position he is responsible for the overall IT architecture, chairs FOITT’s architecture board and ensures the ongoing development of the IT Enterprise Architecture. Prior to that, he had worked for FOITT as a security architect since 2002.

Reto Inversini is working for the Federal IT Steering Unit (FITSU) of the Swiss Government. He has been responsible for the security and risk management at FOITT since 2002. As a member of FOITT’s architecture board as well as during his master’s studies in Engineering and Information Technology he has been and continues to be deeply involved in Enterprise Architecture (EA) issues.