Information architecture as part of the enterprise.

IA takes a 13% share according to the survey report “Trends in Enterprise Architecture 2005” from the IFEAD. 89% of the responding companies reported to have in house architects of which 15% IAs. That is a nice figure. Even small companies consider Enterprise Architecture as part of the driving force in the organization.

It is the 3th year this report is published, and the trends are going in the right direction. IA is considered a part of EA in this survey so the field of Information Architecture is getting better too (hopefully). One good point is that higher management takes the decision more often, instead of the CIO. This is because the EA and IA “profession are still evolving and moving from the technology spectrum to the overall business spectrum.”
Having the attention of top-level decision makers has been addressed before by IA’s. But I guess everyone is fighting for the attention of top management.

Only one thing made me feel a little awkward, there is no European country making progress compared to last year. Europe is not working to include EA (and IA) more as a fundamental part of the organisation. The reports seems to support the idea that Europe is ‘a little late’ (presentation from Peter J Boogaards last year at the EuroIA summit). European countries are still in the top 20 but the emerging countries for EA are Russia, Japan and China

One more thing that struck me. Visio is still the architects’ main tools (33%), next to Office based solutions like Powerpoint (yuk).