Towards the Definition, Implementation and Communication of an IT Strategy: The Case of IT Strategy at EPFL

Large enterprises need to coordinate the IT initiatives that exist in different organisational units of the enterprise. If these initiatives are not coordinated, the resulting IT system is likely to become difficult to use and expensive to develop/maintain. Enterprise architecture methods are designed for that purpose. We report on the use of a service-oriented enterprise architecture method, called SEAM, in the context of a mid-size university. The originality of SEAM is its service orientation and the recursive modeling from business down to systems. Using SEAM, we develop a service model of the overall organisation. The model is stored in a web-based tool. We also propose a concrete implementation of architectural principles described in the literature. This principles help build an integrated IT system. The paper explains the background of this project and the current progresses. This approach illustrates how enterprises can build a common view for their IT resources.