While few will disagree that the inefficiencies of existing enterprise architectures have reached a critical level, many count on "flying under the radar" of those who look at a company's efficiencies. Let's face it; enterprise architecture is very technical and difficult to understand by the layman. The well-publicized corporate scandals have focused on shady accounting practices and corporate mismanagement while IT has gotten a pass in years past. This will no longer be the case. Today, those who look at value and invest in a company poke around all aspects of a corporation, especially any areas of inefficiencies, including IT. In other words, dysfunctional enterprise architectures devalue the corporation overall and can put the business at risk.

Enterprise architectures, however, can't be fixed simply by bolting some new technology on or building connections between systems. Architecture is, well, architecture, and it requires a great deal of planning and analysis to create a strategy that rejuvenates the enterprise architectures into something that lives up to corporate expectations of business agility and efficiency. So, fixing your architecture could take years, and now is the time to take the first steps toward creating an architecture that serves the needs of the business and not the other way around.