EA (Enterprise Architecture) means the structure and composition of the whole enterprise. The artifact is equivalent to the "blueprint of the company", and also has significant value from the stand point of corporate management view.

EA (Enterprise Architecture) is created to consolidate the mushrooming and duplicated business and information systems, and its origin is optimization of investment for information systems.

In the early 1990s, the US federal government was struggling with huge budget deficits. Then the investment for the information systems was focused and accused. Many information systems were deployed independently by each agency and department, and many of those systems duplicated in functions. And, at that time, various open architecture started to penetrate the business field as a practical system.

Backed by these, "EA framework Ver1.1 (Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework ver1.1 (1999))" was established. Even after the publication, the version up has been made and Version 2 of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF-II) was released in 2013.

Although EA was originated by the government which easily falls into vertical sectionalism, but sectionalism is not just a matter of government. Even in the private sector, it will be difficult to grasp the whole of the large company. Such problems can be easily detected especially in the companies which organized by the system of division Company for long time and experienced large-scale merger and acquisition. And also, If a corporate group is deemed to be a one organization, structural fatigue of sectionalism will be highlighted. EA (Enterprise Architecture) is for solving these problems, and is created to achieve the overall optimum.

EA (Enterprise Architecture) is often created based on the following reference model.

The Business Architecture at the top of above model is to represent the business itself. And each architecture of Data, Application and Technical literally represents the data, application system and infrastructural technology of information systems.

Originally there was no Business Architecture (BA) in the reference model. However, then the Business Architecture (BA) as a upper concept was added based on the concept that “EA cannot be completed without business” and “In order to consolidate the duplicated information systems, the business must be rationalized first”.

It is recommended that the notation for representing the Business Architecture (BA) should be the notation for system design such as UML (please see the example suggested by government CIO below).

It is like using a Mercator projection in making aerial maps to use system design notation for business representation. Such idea implies that there is no appropriate notation for business representation. Furthermore, artifacts of the EA which was created based on the inadequate notation is apt to be too enormous unnecessarily, while not achieve the original purpose of the EA (Enterprise Architecture). Then, such huge and out of tune artifacts would have been dead storage in the cabinet.

However, the above guidelines is not created for the private sector, but the guidelines for government. Therefore, when the private companies plans to develop EA (enterprise architecture), best notation and best platform can be adopted freely without any preconception. For instance, if you establish EA (Enterprise Architecture), the model consists of only Business Architecture (BA), without data, applications, technical Architecture can be one option of EA (Enterprise Architecture) modeling.

Then, what kind of notation and platform will be the best choice for EA (Enterprise Architecture) modeling. Its requirements can be summarized as follows.

• In particular, the model of Business Architecture must be easy to understand for business persons in the real business field and should be grasped at a glance by them. Otherwise, the models will not be utilized in real business and will be hoarded in a cabinet as artifacts of past project.
• In order to achieve the objective of EA (Enterprise Architecture) and consolidate the duplicated and wasteful processes, real 5W2H of businessmust be represented adequately, including meaning of business and significance (why), sales amount, profits and cost of business (how much), business process flow and execution means (how) and subject of business execution (who).
• The maintenance and operating costs related to each information system should be represented on the platform because the optimization of information system is one of the main purpose of EA (Enterprise Architecture).
• Capable of extracting the business, information systems and organizations related to one specified function.
• In order to detect redundancy and duplication effectively and exhaustively, the models should be created and analyzed on the same one platform, and the platform should have the function to represent the business and information systems from the various viewpoints.
• Capable of representing and analyze enterprise-wide and whole corporate group with the hierarchical modeling feature.
• Have a variety of added value, versatility and practicality, which enable to continue to utilize the created artifacts in the real business and system management, preventing them from "remaining closed to the cabinet".