Read Case 6-1 “Enterprise Architecture at American Express” and then answer the
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Question
Read Case 6-1 “Enterprise Architecture at American Express” and then answer the following questions. What are the key components of the architecture American Express has created? Discuss twp advantages and three disadvantages of standard enterprise architecture for American Express? How might they address the disadvantages?
CASE STUDY 6-1 Enterprise Architecture at American Expr E Enterprise ? provided a common language for leaders to use to collaborate and architecture (EA) at American Express was the framework the organization used to align IT and the business. EA transform the business. At American Express, enterprise E architects were the change agents who streamlined processes and designed ways to more effectively do business using IT World/Forrester Enterprise Architecture Award recipient for its EA press leaders considered new payment methods using mobile devices, the EA guided their progress. resources. In 2011, American Express was named an Info practices. As American Ex E Mobile payments were forcing the payments industry to review their practices and significantly transform the way ronment introduced additional complexity with the addition of new delivery chan- Express's business strategy for its E business was done. The new business additional Enels and the need for shorter time-to-market of payment products and services. American E payments products focused on delivering ? on a common application platform. a "consistent, global, integrated customer experience based on services running To achievethis goal, the EA team created reference architectures and road maps for standardized applications across the ple business solution delivery teams to create and manage the common application architecture and create strategies that facilitated each business's objectives.Each strategy included a road map of initiatives actions, and the commitments IT and the businesses This team then with mult that included a set of actions, the metrics to evaluate the success of these made to make it happen. The road map was American of the applications, and architecture and governance processes. architecture, and capabilities for the business. The next steps for American Express were to extend the road maps to cover the maturing of SOA and to E Express's way to standardize language, tools, life cycle management The elements of the road map included technology, reference reference architectures and a new taxonomy to increasingly align IT with the needs of the business. As new technologies emerged and new ways of doing business over social tools created opportunities for new payment products and services,. American Express expected to continually evolve its EAExplanation / Answer
The important components of the architecture which has been developed by American Express can be seen as the capability to have the greater efficiency to perform business with the help of new payment system and different mobile devices. All this was achieved with the help of technological, utility or capacity and reference architecture roadmaps. Enterprise architecture team developed the roadmap for having the better understanding of the organizational structure, leadership, direction and processes so that the information technology used in American Express sync with the variations in the demand resulting from the application of newly devised payment system and mobile devices and their association with the mission vision, objectives of the organization. This can be defined as a architecture governance.
The advantages of the business strategy devised by the American Express for the payment products mainly focused on facilitating a ‘consistent, international, integrated customer experience which is dependent on various services which are being operated on a common application program.
However, the disadvantages can be enlisted as there is some regulation on the capabilities of the manpower to be innovative, repetitive and it is quite complex to execute and implement any kind of changes. Even the present changes cannot provide any significant improvement. Whenever any sort of large business process is implemented, there will be some sort of difficulties which will be required to be re-addressed and re-evaluated.
As the enterprise architecture can be seen as a comprehensive design which includes both the information system, architecture and the interrelationship which exists in the organization. Thus it is very vital that each element must operate in sync with each other so that business strategy can be implemented successfully and greater efficiency can be obtained in order to help the organization. Apart from this, there must be some attempts to manage the cost related to the standard enterprise architecture. All these attempts to have the standardization must be directed to have controlled operating cost and improved consistency in the entire organization. But in order to achieve this, the entire system must be managed quite carefully by the IT and try to f=llo forward for the development of new technology in order to make sure that system has required adaptability and flexibility to accommodate the requirements of the project.
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