A Principles-Based Enterprise Architecture: Lessons from Texaco and Star Enterprise

Star Enterprise is a joint venture partnership between Texaco Inc. and the Saudi Arabian Oil Company. Created in 1988, it became fully operational on January 1, 1989. This new organization inherited staff, facilities, and information resources existing within Texaco Inc. at the time of formation. A significant opportunity for the new organization was to create a new Enterprise Information Technology Architecture to support business functions and management decision making. While this venture was an opportunity, it was also a challenge because of the existing information technology that was comprised of incompatible hardware and nonintegrated systems. This paper describes the architecture that emerged and reviews its current status. Two major contributions of the paper are to identify the principles upon which the architecture is being created and to review what has been learned to date in the process of implementing the architecture.