Enterprise architecture advances in technical communication

The most significant advance in technical communications affecting many of the suggested topics for the conference is the impact of enterprise architecture and its development over the past thirty years since its inception. Enterprise architecture enables enterprises to fully align business strategies with the technological infrastructures that support them. It facilitates an organization´s ability to communicate with all components that comprise it as well as strategically align with those with whom it interacts allowing, as The Open Group describes, boundryless information flow, more effective decision support and the alignment of business, application, data and technological architectures that comprise them. This promotes change management and enterprise transformation for communication structures and practices, multimodal communications and the effective management of disruptive technologies. One definition of EA is it is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm´s operating model. It provides a conceptual blueprint that defines the structure and operation of an organization. The intent of EA is determining how an organization can most effectively achieve its current and future objectives. We present a synthesis of EA frameworks and their relationship to the Zachman Framework as the underlying basis for their models.