Current state of enterprise architecture management in SME utilities

Abstract

In the last decades numerous developments and legal changes moved the utility industry towards a liberalized market. Utility enterprises have to stay competitive and reduce costs while managing more complex IT systems. The authors of this work see special demand for aligning business and IT for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in this industry and identify Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) as the key for this issue. Therefore a survey was conducted that analyzed the SMEs' awareness and experience with EAM and intended to capture recent initiatives in this topic. This work reveals a need for a reference enterprise architecture (EA) that tailors utility enterprises demands towards EAM and derives implications for the development of such a reference EA.