Enterprise Architecture vs. Solution Architecture – An Overview
There has recently many posts on Enterprise Architecture versus Solution Architecture; however, perhaps the best definition stems from the post by Jesper Lowgren (see this LinkedIn post).
This clearly articulates that the two perspectives are complementary, not the same. Let’s capture the main differences:
What’s Enterprise Architecture?
As the name suggests, Enterprise Architecture (EA) considers the entirety of the enterprise. It helps shape the organisation and can involve defining the business architecture, applications and information architecture, and technology architecture. It is a portfolio discipline largely focused on reducing complexity and driving long-term benefits through better management of risk, adherence to standards, and alignment with strategic perspectives.
EA is often communicated as the “converter” of strategy into execution, guiding the portfolio office and other architects to align with strategies and principles.
EA serves as the glue holding together the connectedness of metadata and governance throughout the enterprise, it looks at the whole picture, works closely with business architects and solution architects. This is achieved through a centralised knowledge base—the Enterprise Architecture Knowledgebase—managed by the enterprise architects. This portal enables the entire organisation to search, find, and assist with updates to the centralised knowledge base.
Enterprise Architecture provides a visual overview of how business, people, systems and technologies are connected, highlights where bottlenecks occur. Nowadays, and with modern tooling like Next-Insight, we accelerate EA through the democratisation of updates to master this digital model with individuals to update information while adhering to agreed governance roles and responsibilities.
EA often works on top of the digital model of the organisation, commonly referred to as a digital twin, to align inputs from a variety of end-users and architectural roles such as business, application, information, and technology architects.
What Does an Enterprise Architect Do?
Enterprise Architects usually work to provide overarching guidance across the architecture layers. This includes:
- Strategy, Initiatives, and Principles: Ensuring adherence to governance and managing the centralised knowledgebase.
- Business Architecture: Aligning business capabilities, value streams, products, and digital services to meet future requirements.
- Information Architecture: Managing information objects, types, and flows across the organisation, and linking these to compliance and risk teams.
- Application Architecture: Managing the portfolio of business applications, categorising and assessing them, and ensuring they align with standardised technology practices.
- Technology Architecture: Integrating with CMDB systems to ensure software, devices, and infrastructure support resilience in line with business objectives.
Enterprise Architects excel in mastering metadata, taking a holistic approach, ensuring alignment with strategies and principles, and collaborating closely with the portfolio office, risk management, and security teams.
How Does Enterprise Architecture Add Value?
Enterprise Architecture helps organisations convert strategies into roadmaps and planning, realising these strategies through solution architecture and initiative planning. It consistently checks for alignment with architecture principles and strategic goals. The value delivered includes:
- Strategy & Initiatives: Avoiding poorly conceived projects involving undesirable technologies, modernising systems, and fostering innovation within the solutions portfolio.
- Applications: Building roadmaps in collaboration with the organisation to phase out outdated technologies and applications while enhancing innovation as a key metric.
- Finance: Delivering improved business solutions and technologies that save time and reduce costs. Cost reductions are ensuring ROI.
- Technologies: Establishing guardrails to standardise solutions, reducing the number of software versions and technologies used, leading to better pricing and lower operational costs.
What’s Solution Architecture?
Solution Architecture addresses specific business needs by creating tailored solutions. It facilitates the journey from requirements and business needs to solutions that resolve these problems. It defines how to work with business requirements and adhere to architecture principles, ultimately delivering solutions that meet end-user expectations in terms of architecture, cost, risk, and stakeholder satisfaction.
What Does a Solution Architect Do?
Solution Architects develop and integrate solutions and processes based on project needs or other use cases. Typically, they operate within a project or programme, capturing requirements, understanding business needs, and tailoring solutions based on common patterns and principles that align with the organisation.
A Solution Architect’s primary outputs often include:
- Conceptual Design: Demonstrating how the solution will operate overall, illustrating how end-users, stakeholders, and the organisation will engage with the solution.
- Logical Design: Outlining how the solution will be designed and integrated, focusing on logical modelling—what components, infrastructure, and systems will interact with the solution.
- Physical Design: Documenting the technical specifics for operational readiness, including nodes, servers, and IPs, across all deployment environments.
Solution Architects analyse constraints such as budget, technology, risk, and timelines to plan effective solutions. They typically work closely with project managers to ensure alignment with goals and deliverables.
How Does Solution Architecture Add Value?
A robust solution architecture ensures solutions are delivered on time, within budget, and effectively address the problem at hand. Solution Architects add value by:
- Designing seamless and intuitive customer experiences to encourage user adoption.
- Providing reliable and high-performing software solutions through design and testing.
- Delivering solutions that align with organisational principles, pass approval processes, meet end-user requirements, and adhere to both budget and strategic considerations.
A Final Thought: Enterprise vs. Solution Architects
Ask someone to explain the difference between an Enterprise Architect and a Solution Architect, and you may receive conflicting answers. Many architects have strong opinions about architecture and the boundaries of different roles. However, it’s important to remember that both roles have the right to engage with business stakeholders. They simply offer complementary perspectives.
- Enterprise Architects operate at a broad level, focusing on many solutions within a portfolio and addressing strategic, long-term goals and analysis to remove redundancies and complexity. They are less involved in technical details and specific technologies.
- Solution Architects are detail-oriented, focusing on delivering specific solutions and ensuring that all levels of the solution work as intended. They typically focus on one solution at a time.
While these two roles are distinct, they are interdependent and work closely together to bridge strategy with implementation.
Let’s connect if you require assistance to select a strong solution that favours your ambition for solution architecture and enterprise architecture. Book an advisory session here.
