Fitting "Cloud Computing" and "Internet of Things - IoT" into your Enterprise Architecture

Fundamental to Enterprise Architecture is describing the enterprise landscapes of products, services, information, responsibilities, tools, technologies, processes, methodologies, as well as the transitions within and across these landscapes. Understanding these fundamentals from the perspectives of Ontology and Methodology, raised the question of fitting cloud computing and IoT into one's Enterprise Architecture. This question is inevitable albeit the current slow uptake of these "new" ways of processing information.

The difficulty in responding to the question becomes obvious vis-a-vis the various organisational scopes and constellations of enterprise architecture practices. In some enterprises architecture is explicit only from a business capability perspective. In others, it is exclusively practiced within the IT function/department. In some rare cases one may find an enterprise with an explicit architecture practice covering the entire enterprise landscape mapping clearly its business capabilities to its various functions. The responsibility of corporate wide architecture practice should/must however be taken by the corporate management (IMHO, by the CEO).

Depending on your scope and constellation, you may be limited. In terms of cloud computing you may be limited to the Infrastructure - IaaS, the Platform - PaaS and/or iPaaS, and or the Application - SaaS. In terms of IoT you may be limited to the things that need to be connected (physical and cyber things), the connection (e.g. WiFi, Bluetooth LE, 6LoWPAN and ZigBee), and or the storage/processing of the information flowing between the connected things, which may likely take you to cloud computing.

Addressing the question, irrespective of your organisational scope and constellation, you should fit the primitives into your ontology framework and adapt your methodology framework to incorporate the relevant processes to synthesising the relevant architecture deliverables. The principles, standards and frameworks of enterprise architecture should always be leveraged to stream value.