The Gartner survey found that half of Enterprise Architecture (EA) practitioners have an influence over their organisation’s IT budget allocation that is either ‘final decision maker’ or ‘great deal of influence’.
EA practitioners have a "final decision-making" influence on $331bn in worldwide enterprise IT spend and a "great deal of influence" on $774bn spending.
Gartner managing vice president Philip Allega said: "Overwhelmingly we find EA practitioners focused on delivering on business value and strategic transformation."
"Gone are the days of just ‘doing EA’ with little value or impact. Sixty-eight percent of organizations surveyed stated that they are focusing their EA program on aligning business and IT strategies, delivering strategic business and IT value, or enabling major business transformation," Allega said.
The survey found that EA practitioners have a high degree of influence over emerging technology purchases, with 52% of the practitioners surveyed reporting directly to a CIO or CTO.
"This new generation of EA practitioners offers technology and service providers (TSPs) with an opportunity as well as a threat," Allega said.
"Technology and service providers should develop targeted marketing to this new generation of EA practitioner as they have a significant influence on their organization buying decisions.
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"Those that fail to understand the priorities, strategic focus and impact of EA practitioners will jeopardize their ability to sell into an organization."
The survey found that 77% of respondents were either restarting or renewing EA efforts (18%), initiating EA for the first time (34%) or taking EA efforts to the next level (25%).
