The 2020 Gartner Hype Cycle For Enterprise Architecture

Continuous foresight and innovation are top priorities

The 2020 edition of Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture supports enterprise architects and IT executives in understanding the impact of change driven by emerging technologies and trends.

Enterprise architecture responds to disruptive forces by identifying, analyzing, and shaping desired business outcomes in line with the company strategy. Such forces include the increasing business agility, the shift towards digital economy, and the ongoing pandemic. Taking these factors into account is essential for a robust enterprise architecture.

In a highly dynamic business and technological setting, recently exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, analytical planning and change management become even more crucial. Enterprise architects need to support both, business and IT decision-makers, with insights and analytics on future investments and the consequences of emerging technologies and technology trends on the business.

In a nutshell, Gartner sees the following activity on the rise:

Continuous Foresight

Continuous Foresight future-proofs the business by preemptively developing rigorous capabilities, models, processes, innovation, culture, diversity, design, all of which may be enhanced by the use of emerging technologies. This blog post by Marty Resnik provides deeper insights into the concept of continuous foresight including this quote: “Strategy and Continuous Foresight, in response to disruptive forces (technology or otherwise), is the future state of a successfully digitally transformed organization”. We are proud that ITONICS is mentioned as an exemplary vendor in this emerging trend.

Innovation Management

Reaching the peak of the Hype Cycle, Gartner defines innovation management as a business discipline that aims to drive a repeatable and sustainable innovation process or culture within an organization. Innovation management initiatives focus on disruptive or iterative changes that transform the business in some significant way.

According to Gartner, the enterprise architecture function is shifting toward internal management consultancy and enabling continuous innovation throughout the organization. Therefore, a well-managed innovation function is essential in positioning enterprise architecture as a driver for change and transformation. You’ll find a market overview including peer reviews right here.

Trendspotting

“If you master trendspotting, you can offer your organization a distinct competitive advantage,” says Gloria Omale in this post. Systematically tracking emerging technologies and other trends and detecting potentially disruptive market developments is becoming increasingly important for enterprise architects to provide profound decision-making support for executives across all business functions. Read more on trendspotting in the context of continuous foresight and how to build an emerging technologies radar in this blog post.

We are proud to announce that ITONICS is the only vendor mentioned in this category and the benefit rating is distinguished as “high”.

Architecture Roadmaps

The milestones and deliverables of managing change are oftentimes represented by a visual roadmap. As the complexity and dynamic are high in agile corporate IT environments, having a modern, collaborative cloud software in place supporting all activities in architecture roadmapping and portfolio management is crucial. You can find a market overview and peer reviews right here. We further recommend this blogpost by Gartner’s Philip Allega on strategy and innovation roadmapping tools. Again, ITONICS is among the selected tool providers highlighted in various reports. 

With the changing role of the enterprise architecture function and the enterprise architect roles, we see high potential in the incorporation of foresight, innovation, strategic planning, and change execution within EA. At ITONICS, we provide various integrations with specialized EA tools and support multiple IT organizations in becoming a driver of change and innovation.