Who Convinced Europe That Enterprise Architecture Is Just IT Governance?
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- Oct 2
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 3
The European Trap
Over the last 25 years, Europe became the textbook example of how Enterprise Architecture was boxed into IT governance.
Yes, regulators created the compliance-heavy climate — Basel II/III, Solvency II, GDPR demanded endless audit evidence. But it was not Brussels that redefined EA. The real shift came from those who sold and operationalized it:
IT consultants armed with certifications and frameworks.
Consulting firms who monetized EA by selling “architects” into delivery roles.
Outsourcing vendors and captive centres who rebranded coding oversight as “Enterprise Architecture”
Instead of connecting P1 Strategy → P6 Operations across D1–D15 departments, EA was reduced to compliance rituals and IT project policing.
IT Consultants as the New Certifiers for Enterprise Architecture
Europe’s enterprises leaned heavily on consultants. But these were not strategy advisors, sales experts, or customer experience architects. They were overwhelmingly IT consultants.
99% of the voices shaping “Enterprise Architecture” came from the IT side.
BPM consultants occasionally sold “business process” models, but almost always to IT departments, not to business leadership.
The entire EA dialogue stayed trapped inside IT — defined by systems, code, and delivery governance.
Armed with certifications and pre-packaged frameworks, these IT consultants promised “governance maturity” and “architecture best practices.”Enterprises mistook certification for capability and governance boards for enterprise design.
On LinkedIn, in conferences, and in corporate workshops, these consultants acted as the new Evangelists — loud, confident, and insistent that TOGAF, COBIT, or ITIL was the true answer.
Over time, enterprises weren’t adopting frameworks because they delivered business value. They adopted them defensively:“If we don’t pick TOGAF or COBIT, someone will accuse us of having no architecture. Better to pick a big name than be exposed.”
The result was predictable:
EA became a framework identity war — TOGAF vs. COBIT vs. ITIL.
IT consultants grew louder.
Business executives tuned out.
And EA lost its seat at the business table — unable to influence revenue, customers, or strategy.
Consulting Firms and Frameworks
The Big 4 and other consulting firms institutionalized the model — not by elevating EA, but by monetizing it.
EA became a staffing category. Firms sold IT specialists as “Enterprise Architects” to justify higher rates.
On the ground, these so-called architects were doing Jira backlog management, Azure cloud migrations, compliance reporting, or coding oversight.
Frameworks like TOGAF, COBIT, and ITIL became gatekeeping stamps — proof that governance boxes were ticked, not that enterprises were structurally designed.
Maturity models were rolled out as theatre: glossy charts that reassured executives and auditors but revealed nothing about how strategy connected to operations.
This made EA look comfortable, measurable, and billable — but in practice, it was simply a way to expand offshore delivery contracts.
Instead of enterprise clarity, EA was reduced to a convenient label for outsourced software development and IT housekeeping.
Outsourcing and Captive Centres
The final push came from captive centres and outsourcing vendors.
These centres were set up and run by IT heads or senior managers at headquarters, mirrored by GCC heads in India and Eastern Europe.
Their mandate was cost savings. The rhetoric was “innovation hubs,” but in practice they delivered the next feature release, the next upgrade, the next patch as cheaply as possible.
Agile = Architecture became the mantra. CIOs pointed to captive centres as proof of EA maturity.
But these centres were really just managing code reuse, Jira boards, Azure migrations, testing oversight, and integration standards — not enterprise strategy, not customer models, not revenue architecture.
This created the illusion of progress. Yes, enterprises saved millions in IT budgets. But cost savings are not the same as revenue growth.Saving 10% on IT spend cannot be compared to increasing enterprise revenues by 10%.
And while enterprises were congratulating themselves for efficiency, they quietly lost business edges:
Manufacturing: pilots that never scaled.
Energy & Oil: compliance dashboards without renewables integration.
Automotive: IT modernization without software-defined product strategy.
Captive centres became efficient feature factories — but they never architected the enterprise spine.
The Job Ads Lied
The evidence is still visible today in job postings.
Bosch advertises EA roles centered on APIs, microservices, cloud standards, and governance frameworks.
BMW positions EA inside IT job families, focused on integration and solution delivery.
Shell hires Enterprise Architects to define cloud adoption, integration standards, and IT roadmaps.
These companies are not exceptions — they are examples of the European norm. The title says Enterprise Architect. The role is IT governance in disguise.
What’s missing?
Business model innovation
Customer journey design
Supply chain architecture
Strategy-to-operations clarity
The enterprise spine itself.
The Consequence
By letting IT consultants, consulting firms, and outsourcing vendors define EA, Europe convinced itself that Enterprise Architecture = IT governance.
The winners? Vendors and advisors.
The losers? Enterprises that needed real structural clarity and new revenue engines.
Why This Series Matters
Over 25 years, Europe didn’t just mislabel EA — it misallocated resources. A large share of IT budgets (often ~40 %) went into compliance, while growth and revenue architecture was left starving.
The U.S. tech giants now tower over Europe’s leading firms by factors of 10–20x. EQT Group+1 Europe still spends $1.28 trillion on IT in 2025 — but too little of it is directed toward structural innovation.
The ICMG Europe Enterprise Anatomy Diagnostic Series will unpack this trap — sector by sector. We’ll show how EA was mislabeled, how enterprises were left exposed, and why a One Enterprise, One Anatomy lens is the only way forward.
And this is only half the story.
In Blog 2 — “What Europe Lost in 25 Years of EA = IT Governance” — we’ll look at the balance sheet: the billions spent, the revenue opportunities missed, and the industries that paid the price.
