I am very much a proponent of simple and pragmatic design. It should be the default, especially for small - midsize companies. I do however have my doubts once you get to very large financial institutions for instance, where you have a vast portfolio of products spread across numerous departments and potentially countries. On top of which comes heavy regulation.

In order to keep this system-landscape somewhat coherent, then I can actually see a need for enterprise architecture. Or put another way, I can't really see how it should succeed without it. The default should still be simplicity, but to keep every department from building their own version of components and keeping security at the forefront you still need guidelines and direction in my opinion.

Not that this necessarily is in opposition to the article though.