Several years ago, there I was, a fresh-faced IT manager assuming that everyone understood the obvious benefits of having an IT architecture. But I was wrong. Neither IT people nor business people back then understood the benefits of a good architecture.

What seems to have happened now, though, is that IT departments have made the leap from wondering what architecture is to insisting that everything needs to be architected without passing through the 'business case for architecture' stage. So, here it is: a real business case for IT; the benefits of architecture, starting with the three Cs - communication, communication and communication. If architecture is nothing else, it is a communication tool. This perspective should drive all architectural thinking, but it doesn't because architecture is a technical thing, and techies don't communicate well, if at all.