Enterprise Architecture at American Express Essay
Important facts American Express, positioned in New York City, opened in 1850 (Corporate Account, 2015).
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It can be one of the 30 companies inside the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Corporate Profile, 2015). American supplies services such since credit cards, charge cards, and traveler’s checks (Corporate Profile, 2015). American Share cards account for 24% of credit card deals in the U. S. (Corporate Profile, 2015). According to the company’s 10k, the corporation generates $33 billion in revenue and over $5 billion dollars in profits.
The company’s total possessions are above $150 billion dollars. American Share has among the largest IT infrastructures and is able to take care of an extremely high number of transactions each second (Demirkan, 2006). In 2011, the business won the first gross annual InfoWorld/Forrester Venture Architecture Award for its TOOL initiatives (Knorr, 2011).
American Express decided to use an Business Architecture (EA) as their IT framework that aligned their business and organizational must their i . t. Enterprise designers were the employees responsible for employing this framework to continuously produce their processes more efficient and utilizing their IT/IS to the fullest extent (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013). Analysis I will be analyzing the success of American Express’s Venture Architecture, just how Zachman Framework is used to structure the EA, and how this superior their existing service-oriented structures (SOA). Modifications in our way that mobile repayments were being employed by their consumers, the company had to be flexible and adapt to the transformation.
New delivery programs required American Express to adjust their prior time-to-market recommendations for repayment services (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013). The company turned to its Enterprise Structures (EA) to steer them throughout the current market circumstances. The opportunity that American Communicate saw was going to use TOOL to meet the requirements for a quickly changing environment. EA is a complex platform of strict standards pertaining to developing a great IT buildings and infrastructure that provides a design of how a IS of a firm relates to the firms and processes (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013).
The architecture evaluates a great deal of the business, identifies primary processes and exactly how they communicate, and then organizes how business units will have interaction and how It can provide support (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013. The EA includes the Core organization processes, distributed data, linking/automating technologies, and customer organizations (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013), with important components like the ability to work effectively although utilizing fresh payment strategies and mobile devices (Knor, 2011). Though a great EA can help organize a company in a meaningful way, additionally, there are potential drawbacks, which are discussed below. Zachman Framework is actually a tool that can be used to obtain the information about itself with Enterprise architecture.
It is a logical structure that classifies and organizes the descriptive illustrations of an venture (Pereira, Griffes and Sousa, 2004). The framework combines and aligns the IT infrastructure and business desired goals (Nogueira and so forth al, 2011). Whereas a great EA is employed to file and develop the company data intended for American Express, the company uses the Zachman framework technique to implement the EA. Zachman recommended the framework for IT architecture so that each of the IS architectures are depicted from top to bottom.
It uses a matrix to provide a normal to ensure info environments will be properly bundled (Nogueira and so forth al, 2011). The your five roles within the framework will be Planner, Owner, Designer, Constructor, and Subcontractor. The TOOL provided a lot of good things to the company.
The EA system streamlined American Express’s processes, even as we were holding constantly re-analyzing how their very own business had been performed with the added particulars of new delivery channels (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013). The employment with their enterprise structure was key to adapting to the new business environment the company at this point found on its own in. The enterprise can be worked closely with other departments and could actually both standardize applications over the organization that help create the strategies for every division. The Zachman platform positively aided in the implementation by addressing the questions: What (data), How (function), Where (network), Who (people), When (time) and For what reason (motivation).
This helped point out the information needed for the EA and their associations (Nogueira and so forth al, 2011). The approaches they helped create included initiatives for every business, with their IT support, that lined up well while using overall business plan of the firm. These endeavours, referred to as “road maps, ” standardized their very own tools, architectures, governance, functions, and many other techniques (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013). Three types of routes in particular had been used by American Express: Technology, reference architecture, and utility/capability.
The three roads maps most used a consistent lifecycle managing standard and a standardised architecture governance process. One other helpful part of the system included the flexibility that EA offered, which worked well with their existing architecture service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA can be an structure type in which larger software programs are broken down in services attached to each other via orchestration (Pearlson and Sanders, 2013).
The services work together to form a business method, creating an agile, reusable system for creating applications. The existing software parts can be altered to quickly build applications in a rapidly changing environment like the one American Express was experiencing. The enterprise are usually assisted inside the company’s SOA with a great emphasis on recylable utilities and components (Demirkan, 2006).
This system is ideal for a rapidly changing environment such as the one American Express was experiencing. Even though SOA is a widely-used technology that can raise the IS’s flexibility, flexibility and interoperability among applications, in addition there are drawbacks, like the economic and personnel methods (Choi, Nazareth and Jain, 2010). SOA can lessen IT costs and boost the company’s returning on IT expense, however the short-term requirements to implement SOA could surpass long-term benefits (Choi, Nazareth and Jain, 2010). You can also get some disadvantages to putting into action an Enterprise Architecture, including the cost of setup, the risk of stakeholders’ unwillingness to accept it, as well as the new EA not related to the business goals.
When implementing SOA or EA, the entire IS organization is definitely affected, together with the business positioning (Choi, Nazareth and Jain, 2010). Utilizing a Zachman framework to implement the EA defined the involvement of stakeholders, as well aligning the EA goals with the organization goals, which alleviated most of the risk of implementing the TOOL. The Zachman framework helped to avoid raise the risk that the buildings was not a proper for employees and clients.
In conclusion, the implementation of an EA can be described as complex endeavor, but was an essential one to get American Communicate to have the required tools to organize and file the whole business, allowing them to quickly and successfully change together with the ever-changing organization environment and customer needs. The Zachman Framework helped in the setup of the EA, and the company’s SOA gave it the desired agility needed to meet the customers’ needs. Advice My suggestion is that American Express’s continue to use the agility of their SOA to keep up with the changing environment. All their current TOOL was a wonderful architecture that fit in correctly with their business strategy.
Moving forward, American Exhibit will use their highly efficient EXPERT ADVISOR to meet the industry requirements that they and the customers is going to face. The EA worked well for these people thus far, and should carry on since the ideal buildings of the company in the near future. American Express is going to continue to deal with challenges past the near-term future and need re-analyze the situation ahead of considering one more overhaul with their current facilities. Many companies fail when looking to implement a great enterprise buildings. An EXPERT ADVISOR will often fail if it is viewed as a separate effort (Lohe, 2014), but American Express used it as a driver of their organization and inlayed it to their corporate technique.
Per the drawbacks mentioned above, this can be a large and potentially expensive undertaking. The agility of their current SOA and TOOL should enable the company to adapt upcoming challenges and so they should not rush into an architecture change. Furthermore, I would suggest using this program to the fullest potential by taking on the changing environment as far as possible.
They can gain an edge issues competitors by simply focusing on portable payments, new payment strategies, and the most recent innovations and technologies their clients experience. The technological environment is constantly changing with new payment methods just like Google Wallet and Apple Pay. Due to their EA, American Express is at prime placement to accept these new strategies as they develop. References Choi, J., Nazareth, D. L., & Jain, H. T. (2010).
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