---
title: "History of business architecture"
chunk: 2/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_business_architecture"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:15.010771+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The business architecture of the company (organization structure, strategic business units and missions, product and services) is the foundation of IRM planning. Since every company has an existing architecture, architectural planning begins with an inventory of the firm's information resources. Assembling the various information resource components' inventories results in an "as is" picture of the corporation's technology structure. From this inventory, the CIO can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the company's information resources, particularly as they relate to business information needs as identified in the strategic planning process. From this analysis one can evolve an architectural plan, which is a "to be" picture of where one wants to go and how to get there, not just a picture of the status quo.
Cees J. Schrama. (1988) of the European IFIP Technical Committee on Information Systems IFIP TC8 presented the opinion, that "business architecture is required to provide a solid base for the total development process." He pictured another model consisted of elements such as information processing architecture and network architecture, and explained:

[Business architecture] contains the fundamentals for the information processing architecture, where process data, support systems and network architecture are performed. In business architecture the following can 'be identified:
- enterprise analysis: to indicate the business domains
- business analysis
- Information systems planning
There are some basic elements in business architecture: management, organization, processes to be performed and data to be made available/delivered. In the past, when mainly operational systems were developed, the processes received considerable attention. Information was seen as being needed to perform processes. This is changing. It is becoming important to have data available to serve information retrieval needs as well.
These ideas around the concept of architectural planning evolved in the early 1990s into frameworks, such as TAFIM, the predecessor of TOGAF.

=== View models of enterprise architecture ===
In the 1987 article "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture" John Zachman presented some of the principles of Enterprise architecture,

=== Framework for information systems architecture ===

In the 5th NIST workshop on Information Management Directions (1989) a working groups under guidance of W. Bradford Rigdon developed one of the first Enterprise Architecture frameworks, the NIST Enterprise Architecture Model. In this model business architecture was incorporated as one of the layers of Enterprise Architecture. Bradford Rigdon et al. (1989) brought it like this:

A discussion of architecture must take into account different levels of architecture. These levels can be illustrated by a pyramid, with the business unit at the top and the delivery system at the base. An enterprise is composed of one or more Business Units that are responsible for a specific business area. The five levels of architecture are
Business Unit
Information
Information System
Data
Delivery System
The levels are separate yet interrelated... The idea if an enterprise architecture reflects an awareness that the levels are logically connected and that a depiction at one level assumes or dictates that architectures at the higher level.
In the original 1989 illustration of the NIST AE Framework (see image) the top layer was named "Business Unit Architecture." In representation of this model in the 1990s the top layer was named "Business architecture."

== 1990s ==

=== The unfolding Information Age ===
In the 1990s the Information Age was unfolding changing the global market economy. With the businesses adapting, the new concept of business architecture was presented as promising alternative. Gharajedaghi (1999) explained the context:

In a global market economy with ever-increasing levels of disturbance, a viable business can no longer be locked into a single form or function. Success comes from a self-renewing capability to spontaneously create structures and functions that fit the moment. In this context, proper functioning of self-reference would certainly prevent the vacillations and the random search for new products/markets that have, over the past years, destroyed so many businesses.In fact, the ability to continuously match the portfolio of internal competencies with the portfolio of emerging market opportunities is the foundation of the emerging concept of new business architecture...
According to Bodine and Hilty (2009) "important advances in this area borrowed from the operations discipline came in 1993 in the form of Michael Hammer and James Champy‘s book Reengineering the Corporation, which introduced tools for mapping and optimizing business activities using process modeling. The Balanced Scorecard developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton at about the same time enabled the business to measure overall corporate success against goals on qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions."

=== Descriptions ===
In the 1990s works the concept of business architecture is presented in distinguished ways: 