Conclusion

We conclude this chapter by noting that a successful architecture is created solely to support business processes and not the reverse. Many organizations fail in this undertaking by defining business objects and respective data elements that are never utilized. Even worse, they miss essential pieces of data used in business processes or they collect data that provide zero value to the organization. Remember: The purpose of an architecture is to support business processes, nothing else. This is what will allow an organization to stay agile.

In this chapter we have covered the following:

• Baseline data architecture

• Frameworks

• Metadata

• Data modeling

• Data warehousing

• Data security

• Agile databases

• Best practices

We have outlined an ideal vision of how enterprise architecture should function in an agile enterprise. If you follow the guidelines presented, you are guaranteed that the enterprise has achieved the required preparation to create an invaluable and consistent data architecture.