Enterprise Architecture and SOA

Zachman Framework analyzes EA from the various perspectives (Planner, Owner, Designer, Builder, Subcontractor) and abstractions (What, How, Where, Who, When, Why). Bredemeyer Consulting describe EA as business capabilities architecture, focusing on the triad of people, process, and technology. TOGAF describes how to set up EA by iterating through the various phases of their Architecture Development Method. In short, EA is all about seeking an alignment between IT and business, to make IT more pliable to the business needs.

Technologically, SOA is an extension of the age-old component oriented architecture (COM, CORBA, EJB, etc). Fundamentally, it has a similar set of challenges and benefits. Exposing a service as a Web Service primarily focuses the attention on how the data is interchanged, and on a plethora of supporting standards. Exposing services the Jini way, which I might add is more mature than web services, lets you interchange behavior along with the data.

Conceptually, SOA focuses on the business processes, hooking together different services to create fluid processes. It seeks to align the various services to business processes, to help create a flexible and an agile IT.

In my view, there are similarities in the intent behind both EA and SOA. The approaches, however, may be different.