page_title: Enterprise architecture framework
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Enterprise architecture framework / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Evolution of Enterprise Architecture Frameworks from 1987 to 2003
context_page_description: An enterprise architecture framework defines how to create and use an enterprise architecture. An architecture framework provides principles and practices for creating and using the architecture description of a system. It structures architects' thinking by dividing the architecture description into domains, layers, or views, and offers models - typically matrices and diagrams - for documenting each view. This allows for making systemic design decisions on all the components of the system and making long-term decisions around new design requirements, sustainability, and support.
context_section_description: The earliest rudiments of the step-wise planning methodology currently advocated by TOGAF and other EA frameworks can be traced back to the article of Marshall K. Evans and Lou R. Hague titled "Master Plan for Information Systems" published in 1962 in Harvard Business Review.
  Since the 1970s people working in IS/IT have looked for ways to engage business people – to enable business roles and processes - and to influence investment in business information systems and technologies – with a view to the wide and long term benefits of the enterprise. Many of the aims, principles, concepts and methods now employed in EA frameworks were established in the 1980s, and can be found in IS and IT architecture frameworks published in that decade and the next.
  By 1980, IBM's Business Systems Planning (BSP) was promoted as a method for analyzing and designing an organization's information architecture, with the following goals:
  understand the issues and opportunities with the current applications and technical architecture;
  develop a future state and migration path for the technology that supports the enterprise;
  provide business executives with a direction and decision making framework for IT capital expenditures;
  provide the information system (IS) with a blueprint for development.
  In 1982, when working for IBM and with BSP, John Zachman outlined his framework for enterprise-level "Information Systems Architecture". Then and in later papers, Zachman used the word enterprise as a synonym for business. "Although many popular information systems planning methodologies, design approaches, and various tools and techniques do not preclude or are not inconsistent with enterprise-level analysis, few of them explicitly address or attempt to define enterprise architectures." However, in this article the term "Enterprise Architecture" was mentioned only once without any specific definition and all subsequent works of Zachman used the term "Information Systems Architecture".
  In 1986, the PRISM architecture framework was developed as a result of the research project sponsored by a group of companies, including IBM, which was seemingly the first published EA framework.
  In 1987, John Zachman, who was a marketing specialist at IBM, published the paper, A Framework for Information Systems Architecture. The paper provided a classification scheme for artifacts that describe (at several levels of abstraction) the what, how, where, who, when and why of information systems. Given IBM already employed BSP, Zachman had no need to provide planning process. The paper did not mention enterprise architecture.
  In 1989, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the NIST Enterprise Architecture Model. This was a five-layer reference model that illustrates the interrelationship of business, information system, and technology domains. It was promoted within the U.S. federal government. It was not an EA framework as we see it now, but it helped to establish the notion of dividing EA into architecture domains or layers. The NIST Enterprise Architecture Model seemingly was the first publication that consistently used the term "Enterprise Architecture".
  In 1990, the term "Enterprise Architecture" was formally defined for the first time as an architecture that "defines and interrelates data, hardware, software, and communications resources, as well as the supporting organization required to maintain the overall physical structure required by the architecture".
  In 1992, a paper by Zachman and Sowa started thus "John Zachman introduced a framework for information systems architecture (ISA) that has been widely adopted by systems analysts and database designers." The term enterprise architecture did not appear. The paper was about using the ISA framework to describe, “...the overall information system and how it relates to the enterprise and its surrounding environment.” The word enterprise was used as a synonym for business.
  In 1993, Stephen Spewak's book Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) defined a process for defining architectures for the u
caption: Overview of Enterprise Architecture Frameworks evolution (1987–2003).[4][5] On the left: The Zachman Framework 1987, NIST Enterprise Architecture 1989, EAP 1992, TISAF 1997, FEAF 1999 and TEAF 2000. On the right: TAFIM influenced by POSIX, JTA, JTAA, TOGAF 1995, DoD TRM[6] and C4ISR 1996, and DoDAF 2003.
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