EA in the past

This was pretty funny… I received this email yesterday:

Looked interesting, so I clicked to read the abstract:

Butler Group believes that now is the time for organisations to start considering and deploying Enterprise Architecture based around a balanced business process and information view of operations. It is crucial that business and information requirements drive the creation of IT services. In many instances a rudderless IT department adopts a technology push approach due to the absence of any easily understood corporate direction and poorly articulated strategy.

To remain competitive organisations must urgently address the growing dislocation between the business requirements and IT deliverables. This issue is directly impacting the enterprise’s ability to make quick, accurate decisions and causing the slow implementation of the determined course of action. The gap between IT capability and business needs cannot be allowed to continue. Adoption of an end-to-end Enterprise Architecture approach will help to re-align IT developments with business objectives.

Excellent stuff, I completely agree with all that. Then I glanced at the report publication date: February 2004. 2004??!! February 2005 would have been bad enough, but eBizq is hyping an enterprise architecture report that’s 18 months old? Maybe they should have edited the abstract to begin “A year and a half ago, Butler Group believed that it was then the time for organisations to start considering and deploying Enterprise Architecture…”

To be fair, however, so few companies are taking EA seriously that there is probably still a lot of timely information in the report, but I’m not sure who would shell out the big bucks to look at last year’s news.