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Top1. Introduction
Many global corporations have experienced a variety of changes resulting from the emergence of new technologies, globalization, shifts in customer needs, and the implementation of new business models. Significant changes in cutting-edge IT technology due to recent developments in cloud computing and mobile IT (such as progress in big data technology), in particular, have arisen as new trends in IT. Furthermore, major advances in the abovementioned technologies and processes have created a “digital IT economy,” introducing both business opportunities and business risks, forcing enterprises to innovate or face the consequences (Boardman & KPN 2015). Enterprise systems (ES) are complex application software packages that contain mechanisms capable of supporting the management of the entire enterprise and of integrating all areas of its functioning (Davenport 1998, p.121). This requires Enterprise Architecture (EA) to be effective because contributing to the design of such large integrated systems would in future represent a major technical challenge toward the era of cloud/mobile IT/digital IT. From a comprehensive perspective, EA encompasses all enterprise artifacts, such as business, the organization, applications, data, and infrastructure, which are necessary to establish current architecture visibility and future architecture to produce a roadmap. EA frameworks need to embrace change in ways that adequately consider new emerging paradigms and requirements that affect EA, such as enterprise mobile IT/cloud computing (Buckl et al., 2010/ Alwadain et al., 2014). However, specific EA frameworks, e.g., The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), are criticized for their size, lack of agility, and complexity (Gill et al., 2014). Masuda et al. (2016) found existing EA frameworks to be inappropriate to achieve digital transformation. On the other hand, the necessity of implementing EA in parallel in the mid-/long term (roadmaps and target architectures, etc.) in the era of cloud/mobile IT/digital IT should be emphasized in terms of promoting the alignment of IS/IT projects with management strategy/IT strategy.
In consideration of the above background information, the purpose of this paper is to propose an “Adaptive Integrated EA framework” to meet the requirements of the digital transformation in relation to the above agility-related aspects. The proposed EA framework should support an IT strategy promoting cloud/mobile IT/Digital IT on the basis of what our prior research suggested. The paper also presents the results of our investigation of an example case in a global healthcare enterprise (GHE), where the abovementioned EA framework is built and practically implemented. This is the only case study of related up-to-date EA toward the era of digital IT and enables us to clarify the effectiveness, adaptability, benefits, and critical success factors of this EA Framework in the era of cloud/mobile IT/digital IT.