My vision on architecture is that it is all about making fundamental choices, and influencing the right people in order to achieve the required change. This means that architecture is also very much concerned with change management and stakeholder management. I also believe that architecture should combine top-down and bottom-up views. The bottom-up view is necessary to understand the issues and concerns of the relevant stakeholders that need to be addressed. The top-down view is your added value as an architect where you take context, other stakeholders, developments and theory into account. We however need to ensure that we stay pragmatic; just in time architecture with just enough details. I see a big difference between enterprise architecture and solution architecture; the first is about providing direction, the second is about providing high-level design.

With respect to my personal area of expertise; I focus on enterprise applications and their integration. This is very much the area of application architecture, but also includes integration architecture in general and Service Oriented Architecture in particular. I believe that this is an important area for organisations since this is where business is confronted with IT, and it is here where the added value of IT is most visible. Note that I do not distinguish between application architecture and software architecture. An IT architect needs to have enough knowledge and experience to be able to conceptualize, as well as understand capabilities of today's technologies. My personal view on Service Oriented Architecture is that it is a large toolbox of principles, guidelines and technology. I see it as another step in the professionalization of software development; IT professionals should apply it just as they apply principles such as "separation of concerns".

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