The life of an enterprise architect is becoming busy and difficult.
Before the era of big data, the enterprise architect “only” had to
worry about the data and systems within their own data center.
However, over the past decade there were revolutionary changes
to the way information is used by businesses and how data
management platforms support the information available from
modern data sources.

Cloud broke down the boundaries of enterprise data centers,
with applications housed and data created outside the “four
walls” of an organization. This introduced a host of complexities
for enterprise architects focused on security, privacy, and
control. Mobile influences continued to push data outside the
data center. Maintaining data flows to each of those data access
points, often as tablets or mobile phones, introduced additional
troubles. Incoming data from mobile devices brought new data
formats and a flood of information to the enterprise architect.

These alterations in the formats and locations of systems and data
created massive change for data-driven organizations who want
to develop competitive advantage. That advantage may come in
the form of new data sources such as device sensor logs, social
media streams, and mobile device geolocation information;
create new projects to take advantage of these new data sources;
and establish environments with diverse data management
platforms to support these efforts.

This paper written by EMA showcases the challenges & opportunities faced by today’s enterprise architects.