John Zachman

"It is not adequate merely to produce running code. In the long term, enterprise value lies in the models themselves. They have intrinsic value in their own right, as they constitute the baseline for managing change"

"A framework as it applies to enterprises is simply a logical structure for classifying and organising the descriptive representations of an enterprise that are significant to the management of the enterprise as well as to the development of the enterprises system [with the aim of] rationalising the carious concepts and specifications in order to provide for clarity of professional communication, to allow for improving and integrating development methodologies and tools, and to establish credibility and confidence in the investment of systems resources."

"The analytical approach employed by both BSP and BISC is "top down". The implications of the words "top down" are multiple and varied, and all apply to these analysis. For instance:"

"Decentralization without structure is chaos."

"(Enterprise Architecture is) the set of descriptive representations (i.e., models) that are relevant for describing an Enterprise such that it can be produced to managements requirements (quality) and maintained over the period of its useful life."

"There is a set of architectural representations produced over the process of building a complex engineering product representing the different perspectives of the different participants."

"[In Mr. Zachmans view] the architects drawings [represent] a transcription of the owners perceptual requirements."

"In the early ‘80’s, there was little interest in the idea of Enterprise Reengineering or and the use of formalisms and models was generally limited to some aspects of application development within the Information Systems community. The subject of "architecture" was acknowledged at that time, however, there was little definition to support the concept. This lack of definition precipitated the initial investigation that ultimately resulted in the "Framework for Information Systems Architecture." Although from the outset, it was clear that it should have been referred to as a "Framework for Enterprise Architecture," that enlarged perspective could only now begin to be generally understood as a result of the relatively recent and increased, worldwide focus on Enterprise "engineering."

"Business System Planning (BSP) and Business Information Control Study (BICS) are two information system planning study methodologies that specifically employ enterprise analysis techniques in the course of their analysis. Underlying the BSP and BICS analysis are the data management problems that result from systems design approaches that optimize the management of technology at the expense of managing the data."

"To keep the business from disintegrating, the concept of information systems architecture is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity"

"[Zachman reasons that] an analogous set of architectural representations is likely to be produced in building any complex product."

"The world contains entities, processes, locations, people, times, and purposes. Computer systems are filled with bits, bytes, numbers, and the programs that manipulate them. If the computer is to do anything useful, the concrete things in the world must be related to the abstract bits in the computer. Zachman’s framework for information systems architecture (ISA) makes that link. It provides a systematic taxonomy of concepts for relating things in the world to the representations in the computer."