John Zachman's recent white paper on Federated Architecture (edited by Stan Locke) is available from the publisher, Intervista.
From the introduction:
"There is something very useful about the idea of Federated Architecture because in complex enterprises where there are a multiplicity of diverse business units, not only does it present complex management challenges, but the dissipation of energy and resources through sub-optimization and duplication can be extravagant.When such a complex Enterprise comes under the heavy stress of dramatic, increased demand, and increased complexity of that demand, coupled with high rates of change and constrained resource availability, there is a great deal of incentive to leverage as much commonality as possible (i.e. Enterprise optimization as opposed to Enterprise suboptimization) while at the same time continuing to provide for substantial diversity as required … a classic case of a federal system of government. There are some things you want optimized (common) and some things you want sub-optimized (not common). You are strongly incented to minimize the energy and resources dissipated through duplication, internal disorder and discontinuities. At the same time you are encouraged to support the diversity of unique environmental demands. The question is, what is to be common and what is to be not common."
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