Enterprise Architecture: A Tool for IS Strategy Formulation

Nowadays, many organizations are concerned with how successfully they can formulate an information system (IS) strategy. Have them adopted enterprise architecture, they are concerned of how to activate the business and IS decisions. From a functional perspective, enterprise architecture demonstrates how all information technology elements in an organization, systems, processes and people work together as a whole. Hence, enterprise architecture is an approach of aligning the business area of an organization with the IT area. It has become widely recognized that an enterprise architecture plays a key role in influencing the IS strategy formulation. Strategy formulation in enterprises is a continuous process and it is considered an implicit process that is influenced by a set of factors in which enterprise architecture is a major one. In this paper, we discuss that role that an enterprise architecture plays in influencing the IS strategy formulation.