enterprise

enterprise, noun

collection of organisations that share a common set of goals and objectives

[Source: adapted from Gartner]

Remark 1: An enterprise can be, for example, a business unit or department, an entire corporation, a government agency or a collection of businesses joined together in a partnership. Differences in the scope of an enterprise do not affect the definition of “enterprise architecture”. However, an important initial step in developing an enterprise architecture is to define the scope of the enterprise.

Remark 2: An enterprise can be considered as a system whose parts are people, processes, information and technology.

Remark 3: Improvement of enterprise should be based on systems thinking.