A lot of people mistake TOGAF certification as "Architect" certification from organizations like Oracle or Microsoft. However, TOGAF methodology is at a much higher level that the architectures taught by technology certification companies. TOGAF won't tell you how to build a SOA platform, or a SaaS platform, or a mobile platform, or anything like that. In fact, it is completely technology agnostic.
From a TOGAF POV, the term Architecture means design. It doesn't just mean design of software, or the hardware network. It has an abstract view of design. Architecture is basically the design of a thing. It could be anything, from a rocket ship, to Walmart to your mop that you use to clean your floor with. The term Enterprise means any system made up of multiple actors who collaborate towards the same goal. Again it's a very abstract way of looking at things. Your family is an enterprise. A 10 person bookshop is an enterprise. A 200 person software company is an enterprise. A multinational company like Walmart with tens of thousands of employees is also an enterprise. Walmart in conjunction with all it's third party suppliers and contractors is also an enterprise. Note that enterprises can contain other enterprises within them.
TOGAF is an Enterprise Architecture framework.If you translate it from TOGAFese into English, it basically provides you way of "designing" any business, from small to large. It's technology focused, because it considers technology to be a big part of any enterprise, but it's not just about technology. It's about designing your company, including the people, places, processes, assets, liabilities, and yes.. software. Put it another way, this is how Computer geeks think companies should be run. It borrows a lot from best practices in technology and expands it to Enterprise wide activities. For example, it borrows it's highly iterative nature from Agile, It borrows best practices around IT Governance. It borrows best practices around requirements definition. It borrows maturity models that are used to evaluate third party contractors. IT itself has borrowed a lot of these things from non-IT management practices. TOGAF attempts to meld it all together
From a TOGAF persepctive, the people who are worries about building SOA platforms aren't Enterprise Architects. They are Application or Solution Architects. TOGAF isn't targeted towards Application/Solution Architects, although a Application/Solution Architect can benefit from learning it. TOGAF is targeted towards CTO/CEOs. It considers the CTO/CEO to be the Enterprise Architect. It doesn't tell you how to build technology. It tells you how to build companies that rely on technology.
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