Gartner Says That by 2018, Half of EA Business Architecture Initiatives Will Focus on Defining and Enabling Digital Business Platform Strategies

By 2018, half of enterprise architecture (EA) business architecture initiatives will focus on defining and enabling digital business platform strategies, according to Gartner, Inc.

"We've always said that business architecture is a required and integral part of EA efforts," said Betsy Burton, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "The increasing focus of EA practitioners and CIOs on their business ecosystems will drive organisations further toward supporting and integrating business architecture. This is to ensure that investments support a business ecosystem strategy that involves customers, partners, organisations and technology."

The results of Gartner's annual global CIO survey support this development. The responses show that, of CIOs in organisations participating in a digital ecosystem (n = 841), on average, the number of ecosystem partners they had two years ago was 22. Today, it is 42, and two years from now, Gartner estimates that it will have risen to 86. In other words, CIOs in organisations participating in a digital ecosystem are seeing, and expecting to see, their digital ecosystem partners increase by approximately 100 per cent every two years.

"EA practitioners must focus their business architecture efforts on defining their business strategy, which includes outlining their digital business platform's strategy*, particularly relative to a platform business model," added Ms Burton. In addition, EA practitioners will increasingly focus on the business and technology opportunities and challenges by integrating with another organisations' digital platforms and/or by defining their own innovative digital platforms.

Design-Driven Architecture Is Essential to Build and Evolve Platform Ecosystems

Digital innovation continues to transform itself, and EA needs to continuously evolve to keep pace with digital. Building on the base of business-outcome-driven EA, which emphasizes the business and the execution of the business, enterprise architects are increasingly focusing on the design side of architecture — which is at the forefront of digital innovation.

Gartner predicts that by 2018, 40 per cent of enterprise architects will focus on design-driven architecture. "It allows organisations to understand the ecosystem and its actors, gaining insight into them and their behaviour and developing and evolving the services they need," said Marcus Blosch, research vice president at Gartner. "Many leading platform companies, such as Airbnb and Dropbox, use design-driven approaches such as 'design thinking' to build and evolve their platforms. Going forward, design-driven and business-outcome-driven approaches are set to define leading EA practice."

However, the move to design-driven architecture has implications for people, tools and services. "We recommend that enterprise architects develop the design knowledge, skills and competencies of the EA team," concluded Mr Blosch. "They also need to educate the business on design-driven architecture and identify an area where they can start with a design-driven architect, to not only develop innovation but also to learn, as an organisation, how to do design."

Gartner clients can learn more in the reports: "Predicts 2017: Architect the Digital Business Platform," and "The 2017 CIO Agenda: Seize the Digital Ecosystem Opportunity."

Gartner analysts will further discuss how to master digital business platform complexity at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture & Technology Innovation Summits 2017, taking place on 31 May – 1June in Orlando, Florida and 14-15 June in London. Follow news and updates from these events on Twitter using #GartnerEA.

*For Editors

A digital platform is a business-driven framework that allows a community of partners, providers and customers to share and enhance digital processes and capabilities, or to extend them for mutual benefit. This business- and technology-based framework allows for different combinations of business models, leadership, talent, delivery and IT infrastructure platforms that power digital business ecosystems.