Toward the Selection of an Enterprise Architecture Model for a Cloud Environment Răzvan Daniel Zota Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics Bucharest University of Economic Studies Bucharest, Romania zota@ase.ro Alexandru Fratila Doctoral School of Economic Informatics Bucharest University of Economic Studies Bucharest, Romania Alexandru.Fratila@gmail.com Abstract — Year 2012 celebrates the 25 th anniversary of Enterprise Architecture (EA) field, since in 1987 J.A. Zachman wrote an article entitled “A Framework for Information System Architecture” [10] which emphasized the role of a disciplined approach to the management of the information systems in order to achieve the success of a business. Due to capacity and scalability constraints, enterprises have to consider alternative architectures to support their day to day operations. This commonly implies a business model reengineering. Business model reengineering is a tough job, stakeholders have to accept and enact change. Only organizations that respond well and quick to change will be able to survive in the current business environment and economic climate. In this paper, we focus on two well-known Enterprise Architecture Frameworks (TOGAF and PEAF). First, we make a brief presentation of these frameworks. Second, we present a case study for the TOGAF EA and in the end we draw some conclusions. Keywords—enterprise architecture; cloud computing; togaf; peaf; business model I. INTRODUCTION In the present time, due to various constraints, enterprises must consider alternative architectures to support their daily operations. This fact can be achieved by considering a business model reengineering. The job of business model reengineering is tough, because the stakeholders have to accept and enact change. A business model represents the rationale how an organization creates, delivers and captures value (economic, social, cultural, or other forms of value) [4]. Surveys revealed that most people define business models as the design of organizational structures to enact a commercial opportunity. Organizations and their business models are shifting from traditional operational focus and moving the operational into the Cloud. The Cloud computing represents a service paradigm that has emerged as a result of distributed computing across the internet [1]. Usually this help organizations move the focus to innovation. The emerging Cloud technologies are designed to simplify operational processes as users don't have to think on how their service is provided. They just design, provision (size), test and run the service according to their business need. Also, the organization doesn't have to do major capital investments infrastructure and other resources. In some environments such as e-Commerce, e-Banking, stock trading etc. where demand for services is not continuous, capital investment would have to be considerable to meet every last service request (e.g. shopping cart checkout, money wire transfer or stock option trade). Cloud technologies were designed to meet availability, scalability (elasticity), security requirements of organizations without capital investment. This means that organizations payment of the service is mainly based on their usage. Based on the organization needs, Service Level Agreements, services cost, we could determine the best business model, service model and the deployment model for a Cloud service. First of all we have to evaluate if our business is suited to run in the Cloud as is or at all. This means to overlook (analyze) the business model and understand if we have to rethink the model or not. From experience we have noted that there are some organizations that have for example legal constraints over data, so a Public Cloud deployment model has to be considered with care if needed. Next in this phase would be to understand what we need to run in the Cloud and which model would be most cost/performance effective. There is no standard way to approach a Cloud service deployment because of the varied business and technological environments. For this reason the Cloud Computing characteristics have to be evaluated carefully against cost and the organization's business model. Complementarily to the best practices above, to reduce complexity, we would consider the well-known TOGAF EA (The Open Group Architecture Framework) or PEAF (Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture Framework) in order to have a structured approach in the Cloud service deployment. This would also be a good approach to bring value to business and higher ROI. The generally accepted that the Enterprise Architecture start was when J.A. Zachman first published in 1987 in the IBM Systems Journal an article named "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture." [10] Zachman first pointed out that the success of the business depends on the disciplined approach in the management of the systems. Zachman proposed that there are six descriptive focuses (data, function, network, people, time, and motivation) and six player perspectives (planner, owner, designer, builder, subcontractor, and enterprise.). The aim of this framework is to describe a system from the perspective of every stakeholder in the organization looking at it from every possible angle. Architects