What Is Togaf®? a Complete Introduction

In a long line of enterprise architecture frameworks, TOGAF^® is not the first and it’s unlikely to be the last. But it is one that’s endured for nearly two decades, with worldwide usage—an impressive feat in today’s technology landscape.

TOGAF is the acronym for The Open Group Architecture Framework, and it was developed by The Open Group, a not-for-profit technology industry consortium that continues to update and reiterate the TOGAF.

This article will focus on familiarizing beginners with TOGAF.

Understanding enterprise architecture

In a previous article, we deep dived into enterprise architecture frameworks. Enterprise architecture refers to the holistic view and approach of software and other technology across an entire company or enterprise.

Typically, enterprise architecture isn’t just a structure for organizing all sorts of internal infrastructures. Instead, the goal is to provide real solutions to business needs through analyzing, designing, planning, and implementing the right technology in the right ways.

More and more, enterprise architecture also encompasses additional business needs, such as:

• Business process management
• Data analytics

The goal of an organized enterprise architecture, then, is to successfully execute business strategy with efficiency, efficacy, agility, and security.

If all this sounds like it can be complicated – designing and implementing a clear, long-term solution to all enterprise software in a way that solves business needs – it’s because it is. That’s why enterprise architecture frameworks (EAFs) started emerging informally and formally, as long as five decades ago.

(Read our explainer on enterprise application software.)

TOGAF history and facts

As a subset of computer architecture, enterprise architecture as a field dates back to the mid-1960s. IBM among other companies and universities spearheaded some explicit ways to build enterprise architecture, knowing that all the pieces involved to run on a network are complicated.

Over the next few decades, technology only became more complicated: today, most companies, regardless of size or product, utilize the internet to make their business processes easier, quicker, and sometimes more transparent. Today, enterprise architecture is a necessary process to make sense of various hardware and software options, on premise and in the cloud, and to ensure security when sharing data across multiple platforms.

(Understand how enterprise networking works.)

The TOGAF was initially developed in 1995. As was common in the field of enterprise architecture by then, newer versions or models offered improved iterations and theories. Likewise, TOGAF took a lot of inspiration from the U.S. Department of Defense’s own EAF, called the Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management (TAFIM). Interestingly, the USDoD stopped using the TAFIM within a couple years of the emergence of TOGAF. Still, TOGAF implementation and success continues worldwide today, more than 20 years later.

The Open Group has updated TOGAF to the current 9.2 version. The Open Group further certifies tools and courses that meet TOGAF standards. Today various organizations have developed 8 tools and 71 courses which are officially certified by the Open Group.