A potted history of Enterprise Architecture from the 1940's through to the present day. All on one page !

1. ERA Timeline Description
Beginnings 1940’s The term “architecture” is first used for computers to describe the arrangement of programs on the computer which can change
how the computer behaves in relation to it’s environment while it’s engineering remains unchanged. The term is borrowed from it’s
use for buildings. Rumoured to have started with Alan Turing (UK) and/or ENIAC (Pa, US) & publicised by John Von Neumann
(NJ,US). The history is shrouded in secrecy due to programmable computing’s early usage in WWII & Cold War code breaking.
Proprietary
Computing
1950’s –
1970’s
Computer Systems Architecture was done by the computer vendors of the time; IBM, ICL etc. A computer system bought (or leased)
came with an architecture. The work to utilise & apply the computer for each customer (i.e. the using “enterprise”) was not
architectural but included planning, analysis, design , code & test. The job roles were systems analysts & programmers.
Late 1970s A technique - forerunner to EA – was introduced by IBM called BSP (Business Systems Planning). This helped the using enterprise /
customer analyse & plan their usage of computer resources; the outcome was used for the provisioning & architecture of those
resources by the vendor.
Open
Systems
1980 – mid
1990’s
The distributed computing era dawned with the introduction of the IBM PC & a software platform (DOS) from Microsoft.
Programable computers had previously only been installed in sealed “glasshouse” computer rooms. MS was able to market the
software separately & on non-IBM PCs; this meant the computing environment for an enterprise was multi-vendor. No one vendor
could be it’s architect. EA was born ! – as a type of system architecture specific to an enterprise. Early forms of EA focussed on
infrastructure – setting system interoperability standards but allowing business applications to develop freely.
BSP had became ”Information Systems Architecture Framework” separate from planning & covering cross-vendor architecture.
Expansion /
e-business
revolution
Mid 1990’s –
2000’s.
External factors caused EA to become more focussed on business, applications & data & less focussed on infrastructure
1) Y2K bug caused an inventory to be taken of applications revealing an uncontrolled proliferation
2) ERP systems – from SAP etc – became popular, requiring an enterprise wide approach be taken
3) The e-business revolution was ushered in by Tim Berners Lee’s invention of the www enabling internet technology to be used
as sales, marketing & customer service channels but dependent on high quality data flows.
4) Relational DB technology (Oracle, DB2) enabled more sophisticated data sharing across the enterprise
To address these changes, the CIO exec. role was created (above IT) with a broader EA team as CIO staff.
Some generally agreed vendor neutral standard frameworks started to appear; mainly TOGAF.
Current
Trends
Mid 2000’s –
Now
Trends change the EA content & focus bt not its role; 1) Cloud computing reduces infrastructure EA 2) big data / analytics / AI
increases information EA 3) digital transformation causes further elaboration of e-business architectures…
Enterprise Architecture – Potted History on a Page (by: Richard Hillier – July 2017)