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The pain of using a non-cloudbased EAM tool

Posted by Joerg G. Beyer on April 10, 2013
History of EA Frameworks
Source: Software Engineering for Business
Information Systems (sebis), Prof. Dr. Matthes
To successfully implement enterprise architecture to a business, tool support is necessary. Tools help with extensive data storage, creating analysis or planning architecture. Transparency is the key for success and transparency is possible – with tools!


The market for EAM tools offers a variety of products, while most of them still need an installation on the company`s side. This is not a problem per se, since one-off investments can be depreciated over several years. But if one only bears in mind how dynamic the subject of EAM and according frameworks are developing, it does not surprise that IT tools have to adapt constantly to new requirements, leading to very short release cycles. For extensive and “heavy” products there are about 2 updates a year, with agile development sometimes even 8 - 10.

If companies want to stay up-to-date they are facing costs that do not create value. These costs still occur, even if the software is “free” thanks to open source. Downloading the software, updating the installation, testing with changed business processes and possible an adaption of intern manuals – all of these steps cost a lot of effort. Changing versions furthermore comes with migration costs.

To avoid these costs, managers tend to outsource these services to a provider. But this solution has a number of disadvantages: There is dependency of a new service provider and additional update costs are surely not covered within regular operational costs.

How to Measure Cloud Success

Software as a Service is the best solution


All these activities do not help enterprise architecture to progress but distract EA from its actual tasks.
Software as the Service can overcome these difficulties, thanks to convincing advantages:

- No Investments, no residual costs when terminating the service
- Costs clearly depend on use, no additional operating costs
- Further development costs are included
- Upgrade and migration expenditures are covered by the provider

With tools based on the cloud, you can fulfill your role as enterprise architect and take care of your costumers.

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