An Examination of Enterprise Architecture: Cisco Systems Case Study

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Cisco Systems' Enterprise Architecture (EA) capabilities, focusing on its role in acquisition-based growth. The study examines Cisco's EA framework, including the BOST framework, capability roadmaps, and reference models, and how these elements contribute to successful acquisitions. The report highlights the importance of EA in pre-acquisition preparation, target selection, integration, and post-integration management. It also compares the EA framework used by Cisco with the EA3 framework, discussing their respective advantages and disadvantages. The analysis is supported by case study details, including how Cisco leverages EA to achieve financial benefits, employee retention, and product launches. This report provides valuable insights into the application of EA principles in a real-world business context, demonstrating how it can drive organizational transformation and enhance strategic decision-making. This document is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib, a platform which provides all the necessary AI based study tools for students.

Running head: ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Case description.........................................................................................................................2
Comparison of EA and EA3 framework....................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Enterprise Architecture refers to analysis, design, planning as well as implementation
of enterprise analysis so that business strategies can be executed properly. This helps in the
businesses to structure their IT projects as well as the polices so that desired business results
can be achieved. This also ensures that the organizations remain on the top of the industrial
trends and the disruptions by making use of architecture principles and associated practices.
EA framework can into existence as early as in the year 1960s as business technology was
experiencing rapid growth1. The modern EA strategies consider the whole business under
their purview rather than just considering IT. In this paper, the case study of Cisco systems
will be considered and their enterprise architecture capability analyzed to get an idea as how
these are used by businesses. The discussion will also provide a comparison of the EA and
EA3 framework with their advantages and disadvantages.
Case description
It can be said that acquisitions that create value are major challenges for organizations
but enterprise architecture can be made use of for successful acquisition. Cisco’s EA
capability has brought in improvisations in its ability to get value from its acquisitions and
has been behind its acquisition centric strategy of growth. For Cisco, acquisition has been
always an important part of its growth strategy. It was founded in the year 1984 and by the
year 2015, the organization is working with almost 70,000 employees and its revenue is $47
billion. This growth can be attributed to the acquisitions as well as integration of 179 units of
business. The EA capability has a significant contribution to pre-acquisition preparation,
selecting acquisition targets, integration of the acquisitions and lastly post-integration
management.
1 Toppenberg, Gustav, Stefan Henningsson, and Graeme Shanks. "How Cisco Systems used enterprise
architecture capability to sustain acquisition-based growth." MIS Quarterly Executive 14, no. 4 (2015): 151-168.

3ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
The company which started off as a company just manufacturing routers went forward
to capture the global market and this growth of the company is always attributed to the
acquisitions that it made. The company makes acquisitions with main purposes of gaining
access to various complementary products or to bring in innovations in the technologies that
is used by the company. In order to evaluate a certain acquisition, Cisco takes three different
types of measures that include the long term benefits related to finance, success criteria in
short term basis and measures related to specific performance for the phase of integration2.
The company has identified its long term benefits that include:
1. Expected profit
2. Free cash flow
Success criteria indentified are as follows:
1. Retention of 100 percent of the employees who transit from the companies that are being
acquired.
2. Sustaining the products as well as the service revenue of the company that has been
acquired.
3. Launching new products on the basis of the products and new technologies that have been
acquired.
Specific performance measures are:
1. Time to orderability
2. Time to completion
2 Glukhov, Vladimir V., Igor V. Ilin, and A. B. Anisiforov. "Problems of data protection in industrial
corporations enterprise architecture." In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Security of
Information and Networks, pp. 34-37. 2015.

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3. Cost savings
The company’s EA capability can be attributed for the acquisition of Video Solutions (VS)
Group. The main reason behind acquisition of the VS group was its major product named
VideoGuard being used by 85 pay TV operators globally. In this particular acquisition,
Cisco’s EA capability can be attributed for various tasks carried out throughout the process of
acquisition3. The four most important artifacts of EA that played a major role in the
acquisitions are as follows:
a. Capability roadmaps
b. The model of reference
c. Capability heatmaps
d. Infrastructure health dashboard
In order to go ahead with the process of acquisition in the year the company decided
repositioning its EA capability from being technology oriented to being business centric.
Business architecture head reports to the COO and given the responsibility for various
operations as well as the business related views linked to the architecture. The technology
architecture head needed to report the project proceedings to the CIO and was responsible for
systems along with technology views. The EA capability of Cisco relies on the BOST
architectural framework that included systems and technology, operations views and
business. BOST framework owes its development to Informatica and this includes various set
of industry-specific models of reference that can help in initiation of the processes in a
3 Bastidas, Viviana, Marija Bezbradica, and Markus Helfert. "Cities as enterprises: a comparison of smart city
frameworks based on enterprise architecture requirements." In International Conference on Smart Cities, pp. 20-
28. Springer, Cham, 2017.

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company for developing specific reference architectures4. The EA function was vested with
the authority for monitoring as well as to take corrective actions ensuring integrity of the
business architecture of Cisco. It was also given the duty to maintain the reference model of
the enterprise. The model of reference comprises of overview of all capabilities across
businesses, systems and the technology and operation levels. The EA framework of Cisco
included set of different models that are based on the BOST framework. The BOST
framework was chosen for the company amidst so many of the frameworks as it was found to
be best for the company’s strategic focus on its business architecture. Starting in the year
2007, Cisco standardized four different consumption models including own up-front, utility,
lease and software as a service. For each of these consumption models, standardized
operations were present along with systems and technology capabilities supporting the
capabilities of a business5. Heatmaps were developed by the team for identifying those
specific areas that required attention. For instance in areas such as marketing, financial
control as well as supply chain management the differences was not that important and was
not that threatening to value creation. On the contrary, difference in software consumption
models could be critical6. The EA team checked on the changes in case of IT-enablement
which certainly can be important in case of serving as a support to the absorbed operations.
Thus, from the case study it can be understood that EA contributes in a significant way to the
organizational transformation leveraging an acquisition’s potential benefits in the business.
4 Gong, Yiwei, and Marijn Janssen. "The value of and myths about enterprise architecture." International
Journal of Information Management 46 (2019): 1-9.
5 Toppenberg, Gustav, Stefan Henningsson, and Graeme Shanks. "How Cisco Systems used enterprise
architecture capability to sustain acquisition-based growth." MIS Quarterly Executive 14, no. 4 (2015): 151-168.
6 Sohan, S. M., Craig Anslow, and Frank Maurer. "Automated example oriented REST API documentation at
Cisco." In 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in
Practice Track (ICSE-SEIP), pp. 213-222. IEEE, 2017.

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Comparison of EA and EA3 framework
The main properties in enterprise architecture are alignment, convergence,
maintainability and integrity. The enterprise architecture can be said to be as a fully fledged
expression of a specific enterprise including the collaborative goals, strategies, and operations
of the business, visions, structures of the organization and process and data. This optimizes
the legacy as well as the new processes by bringing all of these under the purview of one
integrated platform breaking the silos existing in the firm. EA approaches are required in the
organizations as at present times operations in enterprises are complex as well as complicated
in nature. EA framework models as well as ties together major approaches of the firms. It
creates flexibility for the changes to be brought in and the new technologies being adopted
that support and help the companies in their growth. The framework helps the firms in
accomplishing the strategies of the company7. The EA3 framework is open enterprise
architecture framework developed in the year 2004 and the main difference of the same from
other frameworks are that it is designed as a cube that consists of some key ideas as follows:
1. Hierarchies are required for avoiding disjunct sub-architectures.
2. Defining the common methodology along with repository for the firms allowing enterprise
technology to be supported by the changes and to be driven by the strategic decisions.
3. Enforcing the common principles to various types of segments of enterprise.
4. Enabling the smooth information flow is also quintessential for the growth.
5. Allowing the outcomes to be measured which provides various advantages to the
enterprise.
7 Shanks, Graeme, Marianne Gloet, Ida Asadi Someh, Keith Frampton, and Toomas Tamm. "Achieving benefits
with enterprise architecture." The Journal of Strategic Information Systems 27, no. 2 (2018): 139-156.

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The EA3 relies on primary function of organizing as well as planning IT resources and
the documentation of the Enterprise Architecture8. The EA3 architecture has the main aim to
track down as well as manages various assets within the enterprise and along with this it also
structures the same by different lines of businesses and the various functional units associated
with it.
Conclusion
Enterprise architecture is suitable for the business as this is well defined practice that
helps in conducting analysis, design, planning as well as implementation by making use of a
comprehensive approach. In this case, EA approach is appropriate as from the results it is
well evident that the acquisition of the Video Solutions was successful. It can be said that
when EA framework is more than enough to carry out the process of acquisition why go for
EA3 framework. The enterprise reference model acted as a vital component that contributed
to the distinct nature of the EA model of the company in comparison to the previous one. The
reference model aptly includes the current positional status that is how the company is
carrying out its business showing how the various components that include business, systems
and technology views and operations are working as an integrated unit and enabling the
company to carry out its business. The transformations within company can certainly be
triggered by a need for restructuring by the medium of acquisition integration. This can be
done by moving out of some of the units of business and taking correct decisions while
making acquisitions.
8 van de Wetering, Rogier. "Dynamic Enterprise Architecture Capabilities: Conceptualization and Validation."
In International Conference on Business Information Systems, pp. 221-232. Springer, Cham, 2019.

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Bibliography
Toppenberg, Gustav, Stefan Henningsson, and Graeme Shanks. "How Cisco Systems used
enterprise architecture capability to sustain acquisition-based growth." MIS Quarterly
Executive 14, no. 4 (2015): 151-168.
Glukhov, Vladimir V., Igor V. Ilin, and A. B. Anisiforov. "Problems of data protection in
industrial corporations enterprise architecture." In Proceedings of the 8th International
Conference on Security of Information and Networks, pp. 34-37. 2015.
Bastidas, Viviana, Marija Bezbradica, and Markus Helfert. "Cities as enterprises: a
comparison of smart city frameworks based on enterprise architecture requirements."
In International Conference on Smart Cities, pp. 20-28. Springer, Cham, 2017.
Gong, Yiwei, and Marijn Janssen. "The value of and myths about enterprise
architecture." International Journal of Information Management 46 (2019): 1-9.
Shanks, Graeme, Marianne Gloet, Ida Asadi Someh, Keith Frampton, and Toomas Tamm.
"Achieving benefits with enterprise architecture." The Journal of Strategic Information
Systems 27, no. 2 (2018): 139-156.
van de Wetering, Rogier. "Dynamic Enterprise Architecture Capabilities: Conceptualization
and Validation." In International Conference on Business Information Systems, pp. 221-232.
Springer, Cham, 2019.
Sohan, S. M., Craig Anslow, and Frank Maurer. "Automated example oriented REST API
documentation at Cisco." In 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software
Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice Track (ICSE-SEIP), pp. 213-222. IEEE,
2017.

9ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
Toppenberg, Gustav, Stefan Henningsson, and Graeme Shanks. "How Cisco Systems used
enterprise architecture capability to sustain acquisition-based growth." MIS Quarterly
Executive 14, no. 4 (2015): 151-168.