EA Framework

The business architecture describes the fundamental organisation and requirements of the business based on business strategy and objectives. It is composed of the four building blocks business model, organizational architecture, process architecture, and information architecture.

The business model gives a high level view on the nature of the business in terms of products &services offered in the market, the value chain, business partners, market channels utilized, and the combination of resources and information for generating value add.

The organizational architecture describes the organizational design of the enterprise and the principal cooperation with customers and suppliers.

The process architecture classifies and describes all processes of the business and their respective value adds. It is the core building block of the business architecture. Within Siemens a referenceprocess house was developed which describes a standardized process architecture across Siemens

The process architecture is classified in the core business processes customer relationship management, supply chain management, product life cycle management and the management and support processes.

The information architecture shows the logical structure of all information entities like products, business partners, logistic information etc.

The application architecture gives an overview on all applications supporting the processes of the business with the building blocks enterprise applications, portal & information management platform, data repositories, and EAI Services.

Enterprise applications are supporting the automation of business processes and can be assigned to the respective process in terms of their functional support. The portal and information management platform is the universal access to all company information and knowledge. Portals are designed to specific user groups like customer, business partner, and employees.

Data repositories are the physical storage of all relevant company data and provide an integrated view on product -, customer and business partner - , logistic -, or financial data.

Enterprise application integration services provide the integration of applications and data across the company. Integration technology spans from message exchange, data exchange to process integration.