Information technology has had a profound influence on business and
society. Decades of software implementation have created complex IT
landscapes which are less flexible than current business needs require.
New technologies and the increased use of technology in social traffic
both add possibilities and create challenges to the evolvement and
governance of IT.
The field of architecture provides a way to manage complexity and
risk and presents views of the problem and solution that can be
understood by various parties. This book describes an architectural
approach and a reference architecture to address these possibilities
and challenges. The content is based on real experiences of
professionals in the field of (enterprise) information technology.
The main objective of this book is to learn how to deal with the impact
of new flexible business models and technologies on both enterprise
and individual project level. This should result in a comprehensive
distributed IT landscape that can be managed in a controllable way.
The COmmon Reference Architecture (CORA), as proposed in this
book, enables fast identifi cation of the impact of new or changed
business requirements on the IT landscape.