BEA 6.1 Introduces Improved Business Flows, Architecture Presentation and Navigation
Enterprise Planning & Investment
Business Transformation Agency
August 28, 2009
Arlington, Va. -- The Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) version 6.1 is now available for use through the Business Transformation Agency (BTA). BEA 6.1 is an informational release that gives program managers insight into ongoing content development. This advance information helps them understand future requirements for planning and decision making. BEA 6.0, the latest official release, will continue to be used to assert compliance.
BEA’s Chief Technical Architect, Christal Lambert, applauded the addition of eight new end-to-end (E2E) processes in the new version of the architecture released on July 29, 2009. These business flows are Concept-to-Product; Cost Management; Deployment-to-Redeployment/Retrograde; Market-to-Prospect; Proposal-to-Reward; Prospect-to-Order; Service Request-to-Resolution; and Service-to-Satisfaction.
The E2E processes provide a standardized alignment between BEA’s business capabilities and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) functionality, according to Lambert. This makes the architecture more useful in guiding system implementations and investment management decisions.
“The development and inclusion of the end-to-end processes will facilitate alignment with industry practices and re-engineer business processes in a cross-functional manner. This moves away from traditional organizational silos to delivering integrated capability using Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) systems”, said Jeetendra Ahuja, Deputy Director, Enterprise Integration (EI) and former industry Business Transformation advisor and ERP Systems Integrator.
BTA’s experts from the EI directorate played a major role in E2E development, and collaborated closely with DoD functional subject-matter experts and BTA’s architects to facilitate and guide the implementation of ERP COTS systems.
E2E business flows span functional areas allowing BEA to support the development of fully integrated, enterprise business capabilities. Before undertaking this effort, the team agreed E2E processes represented in the BEA had to support implementation of ERP COTS products.
BEA 6.1 is accessible to the public online at http://www.bta.mil/products/bea.html. New navigation capabilities make the content more searchable, discoverable and easy to use. The Web site includes a narrated site tour with an overview of content and functionality. New features help users envision the content of the BEA 6.1 in a meaningful way whether they are business managers or architects. The next annual release (BEA 7.0) is scheduled for March 12, 2010.
ABOUT THE BEA: The BEA is the enterprise architecture for the DoD Business Mission Area and includes activities, processes, data standards, business rules, operating requirements and information exchanges. It is developed using a set of integrated DoD Architecture Framework DoDAF products to guide, constrain and implement interoperable defense business system solutions as required by the National Defense Authorization Act to better enable DoD business systems users, developers and investment managers align DoD IT investments with business initiatives, improve system interoperability, and execute rapid system deployment though reduced development time and improved re-use.