EA 872 Week 3 - EA Capability Primer for 2016

EA must balance the need to lead business/technology innovation while transforming the existing (largely technology) estate. The innovation challenge is driven by digital business trends that leverage emerging technology to create new business designs by blurring the digital and physical worlds. In almost every industry, there is evidence of digital transformation underway converging people, business and things. To be successful, organizations must adopt new ways of working and competencies to capitalize quickly on the opportunities as they arise. Vanguard enterprise architects are individuals or teams within EA practices who are primarily focused on leading and driving innovation with disruptive technologies and new or reinvigorated business models (bimodal Mode 2) with a focus on delivering business outcomes. Vanguard enterprise architects are playing a leading role in this transformation, with 70% of leading enterprise architects reporting in a Gartner survey they are either responsible or accountable for the success of their digital business strategy over the next two years. 
In contrast, foundational enterprise architects are individuals or teams primarily focused on delivering business outcomes by optimizing or maintaining the current business model, including the systems of record and maintaining the existing estate (bimodal Mode 1). Foundational enterprise architects are guiding organizations to transform the way they deliver services to an evolving set of service delivery models, including public and private cloud, business process outsourcing and partnering with organizations to drive new value.
While these two modes of operating are distinct in terms of the skills, talents, tools and techniques they require, both work on a single EA, focus on business outcomes and require consistent approaches to governance, resourcing, planning and communication. The challenge for EA leaders is to balance both modes of operation within the EA team.
The increased focus on digital business is driving changes to the EA tool market, with larger vendors extending their product offerings into what could eventually become a digital business design and execution platform.  These extended capabilities target users beyond the EA team by addressing the need for tools to support related disciplines such as innovation management, governance, risk and compliance (GRC), program and portfolio management (PPM) and application portfolio management (APM).
With the increased focus on delivering business outcomes, CIOs are looking to outsource technology architecture to key vendors and partners.  This represents an opportunity for EA service providers to shape new services to organizations, and to create and offer solution and technology architecture services.
http://www.gartner.com/document/3187623?ref=solrAll&refval=168851872&qid=684b7b7c769b0e57f143da83ef8aead3