The reality of the digital age is that your business is embodied in your technology — you don't have a business until you have it implemented in your technology base, and your business can change only as fast as your technology can.

Forrester's Digital Business Architecture takes the new viewpoint of "Your business is embodied in technology" and creates a more comprehensive, integrated, and flexible model for the future of business and technology.

Digital Business Architecture is a big vision to which organizations will evolve over an extended period of time. CIOs, IT operations managers, and enterprise architects should care for two reasons:

• Long-term: Without it, the complexity and confusion within your technology base will continue to increase, causing your ability to optimize your business and your speed of change to deteriorate.



• Short-term: You have a more powerful viewpoint from which to design better business optimizations, and you put your business on a path to increased flexibility and faster business change.

Digital Business Architecture organizes, aligns, and magnifies your pursuit of many other elements of IT, which means that you need to learn about both Digital Business Architecture and about the elements. At the top level, Forrester has described Digital Business Architecture from both an executive's point of view and an architect's point of view:

• Digital Business Architecture: Harnessing IT For Business Flexibility
  An Executive's Introduction To Forrester's Digital Business Architecture by Randy Heffner



• Digital Business Architecture: IT Foundation For Business Flexibility
  An IT Architect's Introduction To Forrester's Digital Business Architecture by Randy Heffner



• Implementing Your Digital Business Architecture
  Case Studies And Guidance For Evolving Your Future IT Architecture by Randy Heffner

But it is not about the technology.

Although Digital Business Architecture defines the IT structure needed for the future of business, Forrester also elaborates on the business vision that it supports:

• Digital Business Networks
  A Framework For Firms Competing As Networks Of Specialists by Bobby Cameron

Forrester defines four major domains within Digital Business Architecture: Business Services, Pervasive Interactions, Unified Communications, and Organic IT.

Each of these has one or more major reports covering key aspects of IT architecture and market landscape:

• The Big Strategic Impact Of Organic Business And Service-Oriented Architecture by Randy Heffner



• Information Fabric: Enterprise Data Virtualization
  An Emerging Trend That Will Revolutionize Access To Information by Noel Yuhanna and Mike Gilpin



• The Information Workplace Will Redefine The World Of Work At Last by Connie Moore and Erica Driver



• The Interaction Platform
  SOA And Rich Clients Drive Front-End Platform Evolution by Mike Gilpin



• Unified Synchronized Communications Arrives
  Technology Convergence Will Change The Way You Work by Elizabeth Herrell and Erica Driver



• Business Services Ecosystems In Banking
  A New Challenge And A Huge Opportunity For IT Organizations by Jost Hoppermann



• Organic IT 2004: Cut IT Costs, Speed Up Business
  New Infrastructure Technologies Require New IT Role And Process Definitions by Frank Gillett

• Which Industries Will Adopt Digital Business Architecture?, by Andrew Bartels


• Process Technologies And The Digital Business Architecture, by Ken Vollmer, Colin Teubner


• Enterprise Risk Agility: Governance, Risk, And Compliance In The Digital Business Architecture, by Michael Rasmussen

To learn more about how you can apply Digital Business Architecture to your business, contact us.