A first literature review on enterprise reference architecture

Abstract

Enterprise Reference Architectures have been increasingly emerging as new standardized architectural description artefacts suitable to provide a frame of reference for a particular business domains. Used in an appropriate way, they can be a useful tool for improving enterprise architecture management practices. Whilst from a practitioners perspective several instances of such architectures have been created over the past years, little research on such artefacts has been done to date. Hence, academia still lacks a comprehensible overview of prior literature on Enterprise Reference Architectures, despite the relevance of literature reviews to knowledge advancement in any scientific field. To close this gap, in this paper we present a primer literature review on Enterprise Reference Architectures conducted following general guidelines proposed for undertaking information systems reviews. Similarly to precedent contributions addressing enterprise architecture oriented topics, we introduce a novel classification framework based on Gregor‘s theory types of information systems to structure and summarize former research. Major findings from significant studies on the topic are then identified, analysed and mapped into the referred framework. Based on the analysis and results of the review, brief suggestions to stimulate further research on the design, improvement and application of Enterprise Reference Architectures are also derived.