Holism

"Hen to pan"

"Tat Tvam Asi (Sanskrit: तत् त्वम् असि or तत्त्वमसि)"

"The All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To do."

"Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all."

"Before anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything that always is or will ever be. He is the Eternal and embraces all times. He knows profoundly all events and He himself is everything. He creates everything beyond any beginning of time and beyond any limit of place and space. He is not subject to any numerical law, or to any law of measure or order. He himself is law, number, measure, limit without limit, end without end, act without form."

"All things are in all."

"The single spirit doth simultaneously temper the whole together; this is the single soul of all things; all are filled with God."

"The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter."

"Ananke must above all be regarded as cosmic force, that is as the ruling law in the universe; thus … the super-personal, cosmic significance of "the All" ruled by Ananke as well, can be accepted as certain. It represents in the universe the inviolability of cause and effect and does so as dual essence, as a mythical personage belonging to the oldest theogony or as the earliest philosophical concept of the mechanics of natural events."

"The nature of the All moved to make the universe."

"What is so remarkable in all these theories and doctrines is their implicit monism, the claim that behind the obvious multiplicity of the world’s appearances and, even more pertinently to our context, behind the obvious plurality of man’s faculties and abilities, there must exist a oneness — the old hen pan, “the all is one”—either a single source or a single ruler."

"There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul except in the divine. Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me. There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being."

"The state of the art in software design is the "enterprise architecture", where separate software components implement data processing (or other application specific-tasks), data storage, and user interface functionality. This approach enables, for example, the replacement of a database engine without changing the software components that process the data and those that support the interaction with the user."

"Enterprise Architecture is not a method, principle or doctrine – It is a way of thinking enabled by patterns, frameworks, standards etc. essentially seeking to align both the technology ecosystem and landscape with the business trajectory driven by both the internal and external forces. Daljit R Banger"

"Enterprise architecture (EA) is a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes. EA delivers value by presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting policies and projects to achieve target business outcomes that capitalize on relevant business disruptions. EA is used to steer decision making toward the evolution of the future state architecture."

"Many companies are not driving significant business value from the digitized platforms they build as part of their enterprise architecture initiatives. Our 2011 survey of 146 senior IT leaders found that the companies that benefit from their platforms' efforts are consistently relying on four architecture-related practices that encourage organizational learning about the value of enterprise architecture: 1) making IT costs transparent, 2) debating architectural exceptions, 3) performing post-implementation reviews, and 4) making IT investments with enterprise architecture in mind."

"The history of enterprise architecture as a management discipline has been marked by failure to live up to the promise it showed as a concept. The idea of an enterprise architecture and the explicit understanding of the relationships between the most critical forces, resources, and processes involved in the execution of an organization’s business is powerful. People can grasp on an intuitive level how powerful the reality of that concept would be if it could be put into practice and harnessed on behalf of the enterprise. Unfortunately, the conceptual enterprise architecture that enables the agile enterprise and informs executives in the midst of critical portfolio and execution decisions has given way to a morass of additional bureaucracy and expensive efforts to create enterprise models that are more often significant as records of organizational history than as blueprints for the future. The problems lie in three areas. The first of which is a lack of clear performance objectives for the EA effort... The second major failure stems from the belief that EA is somehow all about the process for developing content... Finally, there is far too little attention paid to helping the consumers of EA information..."

"The historical roots of enterprise architecture are well recorded and span a period that starts with the Zachman framework and continues to the present day. During these twenty years of productive activity many well-known frameworks and government level initiatives have seen the light. The aim of this section is to examine the history of enterprise architecture in an attempt to discover the tradition within which it stands. This tradition is explored in terms of diversity of definitions, the components of enterprise architecture, and enterprise architecture frameworks and methods:"

"What I wanted to do when I came in... was help the community turn a corner and become relevant in the key initiatives that we need in the federal government... make sure architecture was relevant, it became more agile, it continued to move to have a more business and more strategy focus."

"Enterprise architecture (EA) is the definition and representation of a high-level view of an enterprise‘s business processes and IT systems, their interrelationships, and the extent to which these processes and systems are shared by different parts of the enterprise. EA aims to define a suitable operating platform to support an organisation‘s future goals and the roadmap for moving towards this vision. Despite significant practitioner interest in the domain, understanding the value of EA remains a challenge. Although many studies make EA benefit claims, the explanations of why and how EA leads to these benefits are fragmented, incomplete, and not grounded in theory. This article aims to address this knowledge gap by focusing on the question: How does EA lead to organisational benefits? Through a careful review of EA literature, the paper consolidates the fragmented knowledge on EA benefits and presents the EA Benefits Model (EABM). The EABM proposes that EA leads to organisational benefits through its impact on four benefit enablers: Organisational Alignment, Information Availability, Resource Portfolio Optimisation, and Resource Complementarity."

"EA originated from and is influenced by a number of business areas: The manufacturing industry, with Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and later Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II). These approaches developed into the so-called supply chain or value chain (Porter, et al). Not only the incoming logistics and internal operations were considered, but also the flow of material to customers and back. The second origin of EA growth was from Process Modelling and Design approaches, e.g. Business Process Re-engineering (Hammer, et al). These approaches seek to depict the enterprise in terms of business processes, leading to process improvements and “end-to-end” process integration. Corporate and process governance, organisational adaptability and IM/IT system integration were typical considerations. Organisations were consequently often restructured, to become “flatter” (less management layers) and coined process-centred or process-oriented organisations. A third development is a type of backward integration where software developers trie to better understand and serve the business world with “functioning and value-adding” software solutions (business applications). It is a well-known fact that enterprise integration software (ERP, etc.), according to business users and owners, are often considered to be failures."

"A literary review by Schöenherr (2009) clearly shows that the level of interest in Enterprise Architecture is indeed increasing. Although the term architecture was limited to information systems when originally adopted by John Zachman (1987), the concept has since then been expanded to encompass the entire enterprise and interpreted by academia as well as the private and public sectors. The different views on how to approach Enterprise Architecture are often documented and compiled into “guides” or “frameworks” which are intended to instruct practitioners in how to apply this concept to their organization. However, the numerous approaches all present disparate views on what exactly Enterprise Architecture entails and how it is best administered (Rood, 1994; Whitman, Ramachandran & Ketkar, 2001; Sessions, 2007; Schöenherr, 2009). This essentially leaves the practitioner in the dark as the approaches offer virtually no common ground, no common language and no common orientation on which to base a comparison."

"Enterprise Architecture is the continuous practice of describing the essential elements of a sociotechnical organization, their relationships to each other and to the environment, in order to understand complexity and manage change."

"In recent years, enterprise architecture (EA) management has emerged to one of the major challenges for enterprises. When looking for guidance in this field companies can choose from a variety of EA management approaches, which have been developed by scientists, practitioners, and governmental organizations. However, these approaches differ significantly in a number of characteristics and especially when it comes to methods for the EA management function. There is neither a common understanding of the scope and content of the main activities an EA management function consists of nor has a commonly accepted reference method been developed."

"has been an area of significant research in the information systems discipline throughout the last decade. Mainly developed by IT-practitioners, enterprise architectures (EA) became a promising and comprehensive approach to model either the current or desired state of enterprises. Existing approaches are, however, often criticized for paying too little attention to the business side of enterprises. In this paper, we interpret an enterprise as socio-technical system and analyze from a systems theory perspective which features are necessary for a comprehensive model. From there, we deduce if, why and how additional aspects of enterprises should be included into EA. Amongst others, it becomes obvious that especially human actors, as most flexible and agile elements of enterprises, are not adequately included in current architectures."

"Since 2003, more and more authors using the term EA explicitly in their publications, Most of the newer contributions are coming from an academic background. Especially after 2005, a lot of consultancies and IT-companies are adopting their products and strategies to an extended architectural understanding hence Enterprise Architecture... After 2004-2005 a lot of companies started to use the term EA and since then have connected it somehow to their products and strategies a huge amount of superficial marketing material has been distributed. Consider the maturity and the focus of the contributions there is no topic or even a theory in the discipline of EA. Almost half of the approaches discussed in the papers are still coming from low maturity level (Concept Phase) in the context of readiness to be used in an organization. Only a third of the authors are delivering some kind of best practice (Implementation/Adoption). Differentiating the focus of EA-authors there are two specific topics only (EA-Frameworks and Enterprise Modeling) the majority is dealing with rather general aspects."

"Methods for enterprise architecture, such as TOGAF, acknowledge the importance of requirements engineering in the development of enterprise architectures. Modelling support is needed to specify, document, communicate and reason about goals and requirements. Current modelling techniques for enterprise architecture focus on the products, services, processes and applications of an enterprise. In addition, techniques may be provided to describe structured requirements lists and use cases. Little support is available however for modelling the underlying motivation of enterprise architectures in terms of stakeholder concerns and the high-level goals that address these concerns"

"Enterprise architecture {is] a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realisation of an enterprise's organisational structure, business processes, information systems, and infrastructure... The most important characteristic of an enterprise architecture is that it provides a holistic view of the enterprise... To achieve this quality in enterprise architecture, bringing together information from formerly unrelated domains necessitates an approach that is understood by all those involved from those different domains."

"Enterprise Architecture is the organizing logic for key business processes and IT capabilities reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model."

"When software applications became larger and larger, people such as Shaw and Garlan coined the term software architecture. This notion of architecture deals with the key design principles underlying software artefacts. In the 1980s and 1990s, people became aware that the development of information technology (IT) should be done in conjunction with the development of the context in which it was used. This led to the identification of the so-called business/IT alignment problem. Solving the business/IT alignment problem requires enterprises to align human, organizational, informational, and technological aspects of systems. Quite early on, the term architecture was also introduced as a means to further alignment, and thus analyzes and solves business?IT alignment problems, Recently, the awareness emerged that alignment between business an IT is not enough, there are many more aspects in the enterprise in need of alignment. This has led to the use of the term architecture at the enterprise level: enterprise architecture."

"Enterprise Architecture is the description and visualization of the structure of a given area of contemplation, its elements and their collaborations and interrelations links vision, strategy and feasibility, focusing on usability durability and effectiveness. Architecture enables construction, defining principles, rules, standards and guidelines, expressing and communicating a vision."

"The dream of every CEO is to have one standardized, integrated, flexible and manageable landscape of aligned business and IT processes, systems and procedures. Having complete control over all projects implementing changes in that landscape so that they deliver solutions that perfectly fit the corporate and IT change strategies, makes this dream complete. The reality for many large organizations is quite the opposite. Many large organizations struggle to keep their operational and change costs in control. Key reasons are the inflexibility and enormous complexity of their business and IT structures, processes, systems, and procedures, often distributed across lines of business (LoB) and business divisions (BD) spread out over various regions, countries or even continents.., Over the last decade, Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been one of many instruments used by organizations in their attempt to get grip on the current operational environment and the implementation of changes. EA provides standardization, and sets a clear direction for the future to guide changes."

"Enterprise Architecture (EA) is becoming an increasingly mature field of work, but many large organizations still struggle with implementing an integral and truly effective EA function. The literature provides a fragmented picture of the EA function, describing the various separate elements that make up the total package of activities, resources, skills, and competences of the EA delivery function. In our view, the EA function reaches beyond EA delivery and also includes the stakeholders, structures and processes involved with EA decision making and EA conformance. A holistic and integral view on the EA function is essential in order to properly assess an EA function on its performance, and to allow identifying the key points of improvement..."

"The goal of enterprise architecture is to create a unified IT environment (standardized hardware and software systems) across the firm or all of the firm's business units, with tight symbiotic links to the business side of the organization (which typically is 90% of the firm... at least by way of budget). More specifically, the goals are to promote alignment, standardization, reuse of existing IT assets, and the sharing of common methods for project management and software development across the organization."

"Enterprise architecture is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise's future state and enable its evolution. The scope of the enterprise architecture includes the people, processes, information and technology of the enterprise, and their relationships to one another and to the external environment. Enterprise architects compose holistic solutions that address the business challenges of the enterprise and support the governance needed to implement them."

"Since the 1970's, organizations are spending more and more money building new information systems. The fast growing number of systems and in many cases the ad hoc manner in which the systems were integrated have exponentially increased the cost and complexity of information systems. At the same time organizations are finding it more and more difficult to keep these information systems in alignment with business need. Furthermore, the role of information systems has changed during the last two decades, from automation of routine administrative tasks to a strategic and competitive weapon. In light of this development, a new field of research and practice was born that soon came to be known as Enterprise Architecture."

"Enterprise Architecture is conceptually defined as the normative restriction of design freedom. Practically, it is a coherent and consistent set of principles that guide the design, engineering, and implementation of an enterprise. Any strategic initiative of an enterprise can only be made operational through transforming it into principles that guide the design, engineering, and implementation of the new enterprise. Only by applying this notion of Enterprise Architecture can consistency be achieved between the high-level policies (mission, strategies) and the operational business rules of an enterprise."

"In the case of Enterprise Architecture, the most widely read book ever published with this kind of subject or field of study is entitled Enterprise Architecture as Strategy. By reading this book, you will learn that every company has its own architecture, but unfortunately, some just do not have the right one."

"Enterprise architecture is a management practice to maximize the contribution of an agency’s resources, IT investments, and system development activities to achieve its performance goals. Architecture describes clear relationships from strategic goals and objectives through investments to measurable performance improvements for the entire enterprise or a portion (or segment) of the enterprise"

"Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the company's operating model. The operating model is the desired state of business process integration and business process standardization for delivering goods and services to customers."

"Most business-folk have probably never heard of enterprise architecture. Which is not surprising, because most of the literature in the field suggests it’s about IT, and only about IT. There might be a few throwaway references somewhere to some blurry notion of ‘business architecture’, but that’s about it. Hence of no relevance to everyday business, really. Which is a problem, because real enterprise-architecture isn’t much about IT at all. Or rather, although IT is significant, it’s only one small part. Turns out instead that that blurry ‘business architecture’ isn’t something that can be skipped in a headlong rush down to the technical minutiae: it’s actually the core of enterprise-architecture. Enterprise-architecture is about the architecture – the structure – of the whole of the enterprise:"

": (2) The structure of components, their interrelationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time."

": (1) A formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of the system at component level to guide its implementation;"

"Architecture has two meanings depending upon its contextual usage:"

"Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of a company's operation model... The key to effective enterprise architecture is to identify the processes, data, technology, and customer interfaces that take the operating model from vision to reality."

"[T]his article presents the results of a survey in which Swedish CIOs have prioritized their most important concerns. The three most pertinent concerns are to decrease the cost related to the business organization, improve the quality of the interplay between the IT organization and the business organization, and provide new computer-aided support to the business organization. The survey also shows that CIOs in large companies have a more business-oriented focus than those in small companies... [and that] the foci of Enterprise Architecture frameworks should be aligned with the concerns of the CIO."

"Enterprise ontology is a novel subject, and writing a book on this novel subject puts the author under the obligation to provide at least two kinds of explanation. One explanation regards the justification of presenting yet another point of view on enterprises. Why and how would enterprise ontology assist in coping with the current and future problems related to enterprises? The other explanation concerns the particular approach towards enterprise ontology that the author takes. Why would this approach be more appropriate and more effective than some other one? These are serious questions indeed, and anyone who takes the pain to study this book deserves satisfying answers. You will get the answers; however, not straight away. A first attempt is in this introductory chapter. Definite and fully satisfying answers can only emerge from a dedicated and thorough study of the book. The lasting reward of such a study is a novel and powerful insight into the essence of the operation of enterprises; by this we mean insight that is fully independent of the (current) realization and implementation."

"In the 1970s and 1980s, business processes were redesigned on average once every seven years. This rate of change was easy for the IT department to follow. The time needed to alter the information systems that supported new or changed business processes stayed within acceptable limits. In the 1990s, the rate of change began to increase and information systems began to lag behind. In 2000, a manager succinctly remarked: “We can completely redesign our business processes every three months and subsequently our IT department needs a year to catch up with the supporting information systems.”"

"Since the late 1980s, EA Management Frameworks have emerged within the federal government, beginning with the publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology framework in 1989. In 1992, the GAO issued EA guidance entitled Strategic Information Planning: Framework for Designing and Developing System Architecture. This EA Management Framework was intended to:"

"During the mid-1980s, John Zachman... identified the need to use a logical construction blueprint (i.e., an architecture) for defining and controlling the integration of systems and their components... Since Zachman introduced his framework, a number of frameworks have emerged within the federal government, beginning with the publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework in 1989. Since that time, other federal entities have issued enterprise architecture frameworks, including the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of the Treasury. In September 1999, the federal CIO Council published the , which was intended to provide federal agencies with a common construct for their architectures, thereby facilitating the coordination of common business processes, technology insertion, information flows, and system investments among federal agencies. The Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework describes an approach, including models and definitions, for developing and documenting architecture descriptions for multi-organizational functional segments of the federal government."