Enterprise Architecture Frameworks

What is enterprise architecture ? According to thought leaders in the field who are at Carnegie Mellon University it is defined as follows:--- A means of describing business structures and processes that connect business structures. The wiki definition addresses the how part very well An enterprise architecture (EA) is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, its decomposition into subsystems, the relationships between the subsystems, the relationships with the external environment, the terminology to use, and the guiding principles for the design and evolution of an enterprise Roger sessions in his book on simplifying archiectures defines it to emphasize why EA is important. "An enterprise architecture is a description of the goals of an organization, how these goals are realised by business processes, and how these business processes can be better served through technology" In simpler words "EA is the art of maximizing the value of IT investments" I think this is best definition from the point of view of EA sponsor. Frameworks Framework is defined as "A structure for supporting or enclosing something else, especially a skeletal support used as the beasis for something being constructed; An external work platform; a scaffold; A fundamental structure, as for a written work; A set of assumptions.concepts,values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality." There are three prominent frameworks popular in the academic and practitioner community. Zachman Framework, TOGAF and Fedeal Enterprise Architecture. Roger Sessions has proposed a SIP process that is a perspective that analyses complexity of the enterprise and helps built an architeture.