Enterprise Architecture: What Aspects is Current Research Targeting?

Enterprise architecture is an approach to aligning business and IT within a company. In this paper we present the state of the art in enterprise architecture (EA) research, our survey is based on an analysis of the publicly available publications. Our research methodology defines the analysis criteria. These criteria are: the distribution of the papers over time, their topics, authors, reference disciplines and their dispersion over the lifecycle activities, which will be defined. The evaluation included 80 papers (all referencing explicitly the term “enterprise architecture”). The results of our survey are: EA is a young discipline, but the interest in it is growing. Although a wide range of topics is covered, the discipline is lacking basic research. The main contributers to EA are consulting companies and academics. But academics do not contribute very much to the basic research in EA. Furthermore, very few other disciplines are used to enhance enterprise architecture. In addition enterprise architecture is a new discipline and it will not mature unless substantial basic research will be made.