An enterprise architecture (EA) is a conceptual tool that assists organizations with the understanding of their own structure and the way they work. It provides a map of the enterprise and is a route planner for business and technology change.
Different kinds of Enterprise Applications
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Accounting software Accounting software is an application software that deals with accounting transactions.It is typically composed of various modules, different sections dealing with particular areas of accounting.
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Business intelligence (BI) Business intelligence is the set of techniques and tools for the transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes. It must have the capable of handling large amounts of data.
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Business process management (BPM) Business process management is a management science that focuses on improving corporate performance by managing and optimising a company’s business processes.
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Content management system (CMS) Content management systems allow publishing, editing and modifying content, organizing, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface.Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) Customer relationship management is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support.
- Database
- Master data management (MDM) Master data management comprises the processes, governance, policies, standards and tools that consistently define and manage the critical data of an organization to provide a single point of reference.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Enterprise resource planning is a business management software—usually a suite of integrated applications—that a company can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities
- Enterprise asset management (EAM) Enterprise asset management means the whole life optimal management of the physical assets of an organization to maximize value.
Perspectives
When we choose Enterprise System Architecture we first need to clarify what is the purpose of the system. The easiest way to do that is to look at the desired end result from different perspectives:
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From the business perspective - this perspective describes how a business works, what are its goals, what functions it needs to perform, its structures, how the system will separate this elements into organizational structures, how it will connect this structures in one systems, and how they will collaborate with each other. In other words this is the abstract perspective.
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From the application perspective - this perspective describes the infrastructure of the system itself, how the different layers will interact with each other, how the system will evolve in term of extending its functionality.
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From the information perspective - this perspective describes how the information will be represented and how it will be exposed to the other processes and operations.
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From the technology perspective - this perspective describes everything related to the hardware, OS, Network components and other peripheral devices that may need to interact with the system some how.