Who Rewrote the Definition of Enterprise Architecture in the Middle East?

It didn’t happen overnight. But somewhere between digital ambitions and vendor meetings, the meaning of Enterprise Architecture in the Middle East quietly changed — and most never noticed.

Today, when a Gulf-based CIO says, “We’ve implemented EA,” it often translates to something like:

• An application inventory

• A few migration diagrams

• A certificate that says “TOGAF certified”

But here’s the problem: This isn’t Enterprise Architecture. It’s IT landscaping with a more impressive name.

So the question becomes: Who rewrote the definition? And why did an entire region — full of ambition, strategy, and capital — fall for such a narrow version of what should be the enterprise’s central nervous system?

Let’s look closely.

1. The Consulting Firms: Packaging Projects as EA

For more than a decade, global consulting firms (Big 4, Big 10, Big 1000 (you get my point ;-) and beyond) have walked into boardrooms with one promise:

“We’ll design your future-state enterprise architecture in 12 weeks.”

What the clients got?

• Slide decks mapping systems

• Cloud migration recommendations

• A reference model copied from another industry

It looked polished. It sounded strategic. But under the surface, there was no actual anatomy of the enterprise:

• No mapping of business capabilities to departmental functions

• No trace of underlying rules, timing, data, or decision models

• No continuity from strategy to operations

In truth, it was IT solutions rebranded as EA.

2. TOGAF: A Framework Without a Spine

TOGAF made its way into the region as the “gold standard. ”Training firms cashed in. HR teams began requiring “TOGAF-certified” in job descriptions.

But here’s what TOGAF rarely delivered:

• No requirement to define departmental anatomies

• No rigor for deconstructing enterprise rules, processes, or timing

• No model for cross-functional interdependencies

• No mandate to diagnose problems before designing solutions

The framework which by its own deifnition is the framework for software development which is the bread and butter business for Indian IT, was soon imposed on the entire region.

The result? People learned to model frameworks, not enterprises. And EA became synonymous with:

• Phases (ADM)

• Views and viewpoints

• Heat maps

• Tools

What got lost? The actual enterprise.

3. EA Tools and the Magic Quadrant Mirage

Many organizations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia invested in “EA platforms” — powerful tools with dashboards, application catalogs, and architecture repositories.

But what were they really using them for?

• Tagging systems

• Documenting ownership

• Tracking cloud deployments

Rarely (if ever) did these tools help them:

• Link enterprise rules to process flows

• Align product decisions with strategic goals

• Understand how a failure in HR logic affected finance operations

• Diagnose Stage 2–7 failures in operations

The tools were not at fault. But the absence of a real enterprise model made them glorified filing cabinets.

In most cases, within 18 months team responsible for EA moved out of those departments and focussed on next high profile projects, creating project architecture oblivious to any existence of EA in the first place.

Not by ignorance, but by choice because they know there is nothing Enterprise about what they created. As a result, those slide decks and documents have information which have outdated which was and which will not be used for any decision making rendering it great INTELLEcTUAL investments which no one is bothered.

4. The Internal Complicity: When CIOs Didn’t Ask Questions

Perhaps the biggest silence came from inside. As vendors and frameworks redefined EA, many internal leaders — especially CIOs — accepted the new version without challenge.

They delegated EA to IT teams. They celebrated TOGAF certifications. They reported EA progress based on tool adoption and documentation, not execution alignment.

No one paused to ask:

“Where is the enterprise model? Where is the diagnosis? Why can’t EA explain the delays in procurement or failures in customer onboarding?”

That silence allowed the myth to grow.

What EA Was Supposed to Be — And Still Can Be

According to the ICMG Enterprise Anatomy Model, EA is not about:

• Framework compliance

• Tool dashboards

• Heat maps

EA is about understanding, designing, and integrating the full anatomy of your enterprise, across 15 departments, each with six perspectives:➤ Strategy➤ Process➤ System Logic➤ Component Specification➤ Implementation➤ Operations

And unless your enterprise has that shared anatomical structure, you’re not doing EA.

You’re just redrawing IT silos with better labels.

The Good News: The Rewrite Can Be Reversed

Middle Eastern enterprises are at a crossroads.

They’ve made bold investments. They’ve shown intent. But now is the time to correct course — to reclaim the true definition of EA.

That begins by:

• Questioning the EA you’ve inherited

• Discarding project-by-project blueprints labeled as architecture

• Building an enterprise-wide anatomy as a single source of truth

• Using real diagnostics (Stage 2–7 analysis) before any design

• Linking every strategy, system, and service into one integrated model

And most importantly — making sure your architecture is about your enterprise, not someone else's template.

Enterprise Architecture was never meant to be just a tool, a certificate, or a diagram.

It was meant to be the intelligent map of your enterprise,…a way to see, diagnose, and transform the system that runs your products, services, people, and operations.

The rewrite happened quietly. But now it’s time to reverse it — Loudly.