The SOA survey is revealing that SOA maturity is simply one dimension of a wider issue of EA maturity in HE. One way to measure EA maturity in HE would be to have a refernece architecture as a yardstick. This is predicated on the assumption that HE is sufficiently different to warrant its own special reference architecture.
Higher Education is a unique vertical (This drives the enterprise data model designs):
Core business processes can be expressed as lifecycles. Each lifecycle has a customer facing aspect and an inward, administrative facing aspect. Each lifecycle can be viewed as a value chain. Lifecycles include:
The entire enterprise data architecture is built on 3 fundamental entities:
Service architecture implements the capabilities that are unique to Higher Education