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Business architecture: A differentiating element in the growth of

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5th International Meeting of Technological Innovation IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1257 (2019) 012007 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1257/1/012007

Business architecture: A differentiating element in the growth

of organizations

J L Gaona Caceres1, and A A Rosado Gómez1

1
Grupo de Investigación en Tecnología y Desarrollo en Ingeniería, Universidad
Francisco de Paula Santander, Ocaña, Colombia

E-mail: jlgaonac@ufpso.edu.co, aarosadog@ufpso.edu.co

Abstract. Companies conceive technology as a way to systematize information and neglect the
potential they can have by aligning with their operations to generate a differentiating element
that makes them more competitive, being able to respond very quickly to changes and adapt
their daily activities to any new reality that threatens its competitive environments. The
application of the business architecture allows the technology to be aligned with the
organization objectives, improving the agility and performance of its processes, managing the
necessary change to adapt to both the environmental and technological changes. This research
carried out a literature review on the application of the business architecture, the used frames of
reference, the applied tools and the complementary theoretical concepts, based on a type of
documentary research, carrying out bibliographic searches in the Association for Computing
Machinery, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
databases using primary sources of information; whose purpose is to show how the
implementation of Enterprise Architecture generates a differentiating element within
organizations. Among the obtained results, it was found that the most frequent application
context is private companies, the used frame of reference is The Open Group Architecture
Framework, and the modeling tool of greater use is ArchiMate. This is how Business
Architecture improves decision making and optimizes processes in organizations.

1. Introduction
The use of information technologies (IT) in organizations allows improving the performance of their
operations, however, they are not always clear about how to take advantage of technology to obtain
better competitiveness. That is why it is often seen a reduction in IT investment through history, where
companies focus on the technology itself and not in the transformation of their operations that allows
them to respond quickly to changes and adapt to any reality that threatens its competitive
environments.
The alignment between business and IT is one of the main concerns of the Information and
Technology Systems Managers in the last decade. It is looking at the business architecture (BA) as a
solution to it, where it is intended to keep the business aligned with the technology [1]. Understanding
the business-IT alignment as the collaborative work and the support given between IT and business,
working together to achieve the objectives [2]. Likewise, the BA supports the decision making,
identifying as a determining factor the process formalization, the way of thinking and the magnitude of
the process [3], becoming the key element in the organizations to achieve the currently proposed
objectives and the future objectives [4].

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5th International Meeting of Technological Innovation IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1257 (2019) 012007 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1257/1/012007

The BA concept is not a new issue, since it was introduced at the end of the 80s, as a practice for
the management of the change in the organizations through the efficient use of technological resources
that aligned to the commercial interests of the company allow a better optimization of their processes
[5] serving as a bridge between strategy and execution [6].
The BA concept, is attributed to John Zachman in 1987 when he publishes a paper in which he
assures that "the cost and the success of the company increasingly depends on their information
systems, which requires a disciplined approach to the management of those systems" [7], likewise, the
use of the Zachman framework in BA, makes the system prepared with a high level of confidence and
fidelity to the changes presented in the organization [8], proposing strategies that allow the alignment
of the organization with IT [9].
BA can be defined as all the components of an organization and their relationship between them
and their environment, allowing to achieve their objectives [10], while being used as an instrument for
the budgetary management of organizations, to structure the planning of the future investments and
their respective return [11], with the objective of aligning the processes with the IT resources;
however, the key component for achieving this objective is the team knowledge about the organization
processes [12].
BA is defined in [13], as an approach through which one must have full clarity about the actions of
each person, the organization, its objectives and the way to achieve their fulfillment. BA and the
Information Architecture differ in that BA is the architecture that goes from the products and/or
services, going through the business processes, supported by the information systems; meanwhile, the
information architecture focuses on the IT provisioning and support necessary to sustain the business
processes of the company [14].
To reach its purpose, BA establishes two stages starting with the actual description of the business
(AS-IS), and the desired state of the same (TO-BE) [15]. However, the implementation of a large-scale
BA tends to fail in its great majority due to the complexity of the organizational processes, based on
that it is advisable to implement it in an incremental way [16]. For the implementation of a BA, it is
necessary to have a clearer vision of the organization and the market in which it develops its activities,
which can be very dynamic, demanding innovation and constant change to don’t lose the reached
position [17].
In [18], a matrix is proposed that allows the change between architectures. The design of the matrix
of change proposes four steps: starting with the identification of the performed practices, then the
identification of the iterations of the proposed system, next the identification of transitional
interactions and ending with an inquiry to the interested parties.
Based on the foregoing, it is hypothesized that the Enterprise Architecture fosters the growth of
organizations and guarantees the continuous functioning of their processes. Based on that BA allows
to increase the agility and indirectly to increase the company performance, besides improving the
internal organizational processes since the change towards the integrated government is managed; this
means that the company supports its business strategy with technology and the management of its
operations [19].
In [20] and [21], a business and IT architecture model is proposed, which aims to explain and
analyze the impact of language technology on public organizations. The model includes a general
description of the functions, computer systems and the information commonly used in public
organizations to interact with citizens, through human language processing.
There is a concept of agile BA, which seeks to define fast designs at a high level and with little
detail, finding that a model by itself, doesn’t support the particular needs that agility has and therefore,
several models must be combined to be able to support the artifacts that are built in each BA phase
[22]. This generates that the design specification has to be done in a hybrid way; the models that
support agility are combined with those that require more detail [23].
In [24], a literature review of BA is made, finding the Zachman methodology, the TOGAF, the
FEAF, and the Gartner Framework among the most used frameworks. In [25], it is mentioned that
TOGAF is the most complete. However, although there are different BA methodologies [26], there is

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5th International Meeting of Technological Innovation IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1257 (2019) 012007 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1257/1/012007

no unified standard on the BA meaning that guarantees its implementation [27], but they are generally
made up of the business process, data, application and infrastructure layers [28].
TOGAF is the key and widely accepted framework in the context of business systems, however,
these models are designed for specific organizations, there is not generic model that can be
incorporated in all organizations. It turns out that the different existing BA models are proposed by
business architects that adjust an existing model to their own needs, so these models may have
inconsistencies with other models, giving rise to the importance that the BA model to be used in the
organization is evaluated by an expert [29]. However, the model to be used must be unified, as well as
having a description of its application [30].
In [31], a requirement specification is proposed based on the processes above the product. It is
suggested that the closer you come to the organization activities, it is better your understanding of it
and therefore, the requirement will be aligned with the organization expectations.
In [32], a new model is presented that aims to explain the mechanism through which a BA can
allow the strategic alignment between business and IT, taking as a reference the TOGAF, chosen as
the BA framework given that it is one of the key and widely accepted business architecture
frameworks, and making use of the combination of the ArchiMate modeling language and the business
model (BMN) as chosen for this purpose, seeing BA as a process diagramming system of the
organization, as well as business process engineering [33]; where URML is also used as a BA
modeling tool [34]. The framework is made up of technology architecture, business architecture and
information architecture divided into data architecture and application architecture [35], first
increasing the ArchiMate modeling notation with the concepts of the Business motivation model
(BMN) to present a more complete modeling technique of the strategic alignment between the
business and IT.
With the growth of world markets, organizations must establish strategies that make them more
competitive, being one of them the incorporation of designed systems to handle continuous change
and in a dynamic way with the ease and flexibility to adapt to changes that the environment is
generating; arguing with it that change management can be facilitated through a model-based design
approach, where [36] proposes a model-based design approach that optimizes flexibility and facilitates
the modeling of adaptive systems. Another way to implement BA is to use a macro and a micro cycle,
in which the first consists in deriving the business model from the digital commercial strategy,
developing the desired architecture, and finally making the transformation of the real architecture, then
proceeding to the execution of the micro cycle [37].
In [38], a model consisting of three phases is proposed: the first is to determine the relevant domain
architecture, whereby the identification of the current and the future state of the organization is made
making use of the gap analysis. The second is to integrate the proposal within the architectural
domain, carrying out the validation and integration of all the changes that will be evaluated in the next
phase. The third is to evaluate the future architecture with the aim of guaranteeing compliance with the
BA.
Many of the benefits that BA brings are intangible, including allowing strategic transformation in
organizations to the extent that it promotes IT innovation, acquisition, evaluation, management and
alignment. However, it is not only to implement a BA model, it is also necessary to constantly
maintain it which is nothing more than monitoring and updating the architecture based on the changes
that have arisen in the company [39-41].
That is why in [42] they show, by a case study, that the provision of BA services formed by the
components: BA content, BA regulations, participation of the interested parties, and the skills and
knowledge of the professionals in the organization, brings benefits to companies; to do so, they must
make strategic decisions that provide relevant, timely and high-quality information and advice about
the organization through IT driven and oriented to businesses with dynamic capabilities. This can be
supported with the ISO 25010 standard used by business architects to describe the system quality
characteristics [43,44].

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5th International Meeting of Technological Innovation IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1257 (2019) 012007 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1257/1/012007

BA can be used for the IT risk management since it is a variable belonging to this last layer [45].
This application affects the aspects that make up a BA, identifying the BA layers, business
architecture, information architecture, information systems architecture, technological infrastructure
architecture, solution architecture, software architecture and IT architecture [46].
While in [47], they propose a unified approach to describe reliability argument between the actors
that are in business, software and technology elements by using the BA modeling language, and by
using the ArchiMate language they define three BA layers: the business layer that offers products and
services to external customers, the application layer that supports the business layer with software
application services and the technology layer that offers infrastructure services, leaving all of them
aside the human resource, where IT staff competences are precisely the most important factor in the
BA implementation [48].
Among the benefits that the BA implementation can offer, it can mention innovation, improvement
of the IT operation quality, reduction of risks and minimization of gaps between business and IT [49],
requiring the total commitment of all the stakeholders to guarantee its success [50].
Therefore, implementing a business architecture will allow a comprehensive vision of
organizations and provide companies with a tool that allows them to align strategic business objectives
with applications and technological infrastructure. Being the main objective of the present
investigation, the revision of the state of the art of the enterprise architecture, to identify the frames of
reference mostly used, as well as the tools applied.

2. Methodology
In this work a documentary descriptive theoretical research was developed, carrying out the selection,
organization and analysis of the information obtained in the scientific databases ACM, ScienceDirect,
Scopus and IEEE, in which search criteria were applied with the descriptors: AE, AE framework,
process model, business architecture, process architecture, which were combined in various ways with
the purpose of expanding the search.
From each of the results shown in the different databases, articles between the years 2012 to 2018
are selected. For the organization of the selected files, a database was created in Excel with the fields:
type, title, author, year, description, results, source, framework and sector. Once the information was
organized, they were applied as a rule of exclusion to describe the implementation of AE and to
mention the framework and what support elements they used.
Subsequently, the reading of the summary, results and conclusions for each of the consulted articles
was carried out in the first instance with the purpose of identifying the most pertinent to the subject of
study; followed by an in-depth analysis of the articles, highlighting the main ideas and the most
important aspects, establishing the contribution to the research.

3. Results
Based on the search results following the previous methodology, we obtain 1613 articles from the four
(4) databases consulted between the periods 2012-2018. After conducting a review of the literature
where it was taken into account that the articles were related to the application of the business
architecture, describe the frames of reference used, as well as the tools applied for its modeling, 50
documents are selected that comply with these requirements are relevant to the research topic, as
evidenced in Table 1.

Table 1. Publications found.

Electronics Database Found articles Selected Articles Relevant to AE
CM 498 9
ScienceDirect 835 21
Scopus 76 0
IEEE 204 20
Total 1613 50

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5th International Meeting of Technological Innovation IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1257 (2019) 012007 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1257/1/012007

In BA, there is no generic model that can be incorporated in all business, resulting in organizations
proposing models adjusted to their needs; this is the reason why the 50% of the consulted
bibliographic sources presented a model adjusted to the specific needs of the organizations and/or
sector. 39.3% of the papers base their proposed model on a specific framework, so it turns out that
TOGAF is, with the 90.9% the most frequently used frame of reference in the BA implementation,
followed by Zachman with 9.1%, as evidenced in Table 2.

Table 2. Frameworks used.

Frameworks Reference
TOGAF [1] [5] [10] [18] [23] [24] [31] [34] [35] [37]
Zachman [27]

Where [1,10,18,23,31,37] agree that organizations have different characteristics and thus change
their requirements, so implement an Enterprise Architecture model designed for a company in
particular, it is probably not functional to another type of company, that is why they take a reference
framework, in this case TOGAF, and adjust it to the client's needs. Meanwhile [27] focused on a type
of company in the government sector is decided by the Zachman framework stating that the system
will present a high degree of robustness and confidence before changes that occur in the company.
For the development of the proposed models, the authors rely on modeling tools, being BPM with
22% and ArchiMate with 15% the preferred ones; 63% corresponds to the grouping of different
applications of theories, governance models, also IT management and use of alternative modeling
techniques. Additionally, 100% of the consulted material, directly and indirectly confirms that the
application of a BA in any type of organization generates benefits when integrating the information,
technology and people components that allows achieving the objectives set by the company.

4. Conclusions
BA is an integrating strategy of all the organization resources, these being: technological infrastructure
(hardware and software), organizational processes, human resources and physical infrastructure.
The implementation of BA in organizations provides competitive advantages and optimizes
processes, allowing companies a greater performance in the generation of products and/or in the
provision of services, while allowing to know their status and consider a desired state, where the
integration of business components, information, applications and technological infrastructure will
allow achieving the set objectives.
In order for the BA to provide benefits to the organizations, they must commit and involve all the
organization members in the process, which must have knowledge of the IT systems and businesses of
the organization.

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IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1257 (2019) 012007 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1257/1/012007

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