Forrester is proud to announce the winner and runner-up of the 2025 Enterprise Architecture Award for EMEA, recognizing organizations that exemplify outcome-driven architecture practices. We’re honored to have The Open Group co-judge this year’s Forrester EA Award again. This year’s submissions showcased how EA teams are driving measurable business impact through agility, innovation, and strategic alignment.
Philip Morris International is the winner of the 2025 EA Award for EMEA, with Saudi Telecom Company the runner-up. These organizations demonstrate how enterprise architecture (EA) can be a strategic multiplier, enabling transformation, accelerating delivery, and embedding governance without slowing innovation.
Winner: Philip Morris International — EA As A Catalyst For Transformation
Philip Morris International (PMI) is undergoing one of the most ambitious transformations in its industry, shifting from a tobacco company to a science- and technology-driven leader in smoke-free products. Its EA team has become a strategic enabler of this change, embedding architecture into delivery, innovation, and governance across the enterprise. PMI empowered this transformation with a federated model comprising more than 200 architects in more than 30 domains worldwide.
- PMI has transformed architecture into a strategic enabler of business agility. Over the last few years, the EA team has evolved from a governance function into a strategic delivery partner, aligning 85% of the portfolio with target landscapes and accelerating reuse of global platforms. This shift improved delivery speed and solution quality, with 80% of solution architects targeted for certification by year’s end.
- Modular architecture unlocks faster market response and revenue growth. A domain architect led the decomposition of monolithic systems into nearly 100 modular products within the digital consumer experience platform. These reusable components, built on canonical data models and microservices, empowered teams to respond rapidly to market shifts and streamline transformation.
- EA drives measurable cost savings and operational efficiency. Through the application impact maximization initiative, PMI decommissioned 300 applications in 2024 — 130% of its rationalization target — freeing up budget and reducing complexity across the IT estate.
- Generative AI is being industrialized through EA-led governance and design. PMI’s EA team co-led the development of PMI’s genAI factory, delivering reusable AI components such as digital personas. These components aim to reduce development effort, accelerate time to value, and improve user satisfaction. The EA team also automated the software approval process, cutting review time from days to seconds.
Runner-Up: stc group — EA Driving Strategic Clarity And Digital Leadership
Saudi Arabia’s leading digital enabler, stc group, is executing a bold digital strategy through its DARE 2.0 framework, and its EA team is central to that journey. EA is embedded across planning and execution, enabling agility, cost optimization, and innovation at scale while delivering measurable business outcomes. Aligned with agile initiatives, stc group has transitioned from a centralized to a federated model, enhancing flexibility by allowing business groups to operate independently while sharing information across the organization. Some of the EA initiatives implemented by stc include:
- Enterprisewide cost optimization through strategic rationalization and infrastructure modernization. stc’s EA team led a comprehensive application portfolio assessment that identified 44 consolidation opportunities, streamlining operations and reducing complexity. By transitioning 30% of new workloads to consumption-based hardware and migrating servers to lower-cost hypervisor solutions, the initiative delivered over $115 million in operational expense savings.
- Data-driven architecture powering new revenue and improved customer experience. Under the NorthStar initiative, the EA team developed a scalable analytics ecosystem that increased Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS) by 20%, generated 2–3% net-new incremental revenue, and delivered 6x ROI. The architecture supported more than 860 million transactions and doubled self-service adoption.
- Disaster recovery framework modernization that enhances resilience and compliance. The team brought 170 business-critical applications under a modern disaster recovery framework, conducting over 510 architecture assessments and 170 drills. This ensured business continuity and regulatory compliance across 16 departments.
- EA-scaled innovation through generative AI and agile architecture. stc’s EA team introduced AI-powered root-cause analysis for RAN auto-healing, enabling real-time processing and proactive ticket resolution. Agile architecture practices supported initiatives such as its OSS Next Gen program and its journey to the cloud. Using an iterative approach, stc’s team developed over 100 advanced analytics use cases, continuously improving them based on feedback.
Join Us At Forrester’s Technology & Innovation Summit EMEA
Congratulations to both firms on their achievements! Their stories show how EA can be a strategic multiplier for transformation, innovation, and resilience. Want to learn more? Join us at Forrester’s Technology & Innovation Summit EMEA (October 8–10 in London and digitally) to hear directly from the winning organizations and explore how EA can drive business outcomes in your organization.
