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An interoperability assessment approach based on criteria dependencies to support decision making in networked enterprises

In the networked enterprise, the interoperability is seen as a requirement for ensuring the collaboration among partners. Therefore, an assessment for identifying the enterprise’s strengths and weakness regarding interoperability is paramount. It involves determining the gaps between where enterprises envision themselves in the future and the enterprises’ current states. Indeed, a variety of approaches were proposed in the literature. However, based on surveys, existing methods are assessing specific aspects of interoperability and focusing only on one kind of measurement. The objective of this work is, therefore, to propose a holistic assessment approach to support the interoperability development. To do so, the criteria regarding the interoperability aspects and measurements were identified and are being formalised. The enterprise systems associated with the criteria are being modelled based on Enterprise Architecture techniques. This modelling supports the identification of existing interdependencies between criteria. Finally, case studies will be used to validate the proposed approach.

IT4IT as a Management of Technology framework: Perspectives, implications and contributions

Information technology (IT) is at the core of digitisation of existing business models and dominates in the innovation efforts of many industries. IT has until now in many ways been regarded as exempted from the structuration and automation represented by IT. The IT4IT framework released by The Open Group in October 2015 suggests to a major change. IT has to be governed and structured along defined processes of value chains, life-cycles, service propositions, customer interaction and cost control as any other area of the organization. The purpose of this paper is to review IT4IT as a practical implementation of a Management of Technology framework and to review its perspectives and implications to the MoT society as well as the contributions it has to IT professionals, innovators and MoT practitioners. Methodologically this paper is based on an extensive case study of a large IT service provider. The IT service provider used the framework, along with other frameworks, to introduce larger degree of homogeneity of its own service “catalogues”, improved processes for navigating in the heterogeneity of its customers, and to ensure uniform processes of performance management and reporting. Methodologically this paper has been challenged by the novelty of the topic of IT4IT as only very little peer reviewed materials is available

A First Literature Review On Enterprise Reference Architecture

Enterprise Reference Architectures have been increasingly emerging as new standardized architectural description artefacts suitable to provide a frame of reference for a particular business domains. Used in an appropriate way, they can be a useful tool for improving enterprise architecture management practices. Whilst from a practitioners perspective several instances of such architectures have been created over the past years, little research on such artefacts has been done to date. Hence, academia still lacks a comprehensible overview of prior literature on Enterprise Reference Architectures, despite the relevance of literature reviews to knowledge advancement in any scientific field. To close this gap, in this paper we present a primer literature review on Enterprise Reference Architectures conducted following general guidelines proposed for undertaking information systems reviews. Similarly to precedent contributions addressing enterprise architecture oriented topics, we introduce a novel classification framework based on Gregor‘s theory types of information systems to structure and summarize former research. Major findings from significant studies on the topic are then identified, analysed and mapped into the referred framework. Based on the analysis and results of the review, brief suggestions to stimulate further research on the design, improvement and application of Enterprise Reference Architectures are also derived.

A Framework for Exploring Digital Business Ecosystems

ICT-enabled business solutions have created a possibility for automated business relations and transactions. Digital business ecosystems are becoming an increasingly popular concept for modeling and building distributed systems in heterogeneous, decentralized and open environments. However, traditional economic and computing theories do not focus on digital business ecosystems as a separate form of organization and they do not provide conceptual frameworks that can be used to explore digital business ecosystems. In this paper, we present a framework for exploring digital business ecosystems developed from Zachman’s enterprise architecture. This framework serves as a structure for exploring the value network and the enterprise as part of a digital business ecosystem.

Enterprise Architecture for The Sensing Enterprise: A Research Framework

Internet of Things (IoT) will change many things, open up opportunities and enabling something that was not possible before. IoT provides sensing capability so that enterprise has better global context awareness. This is the Sensing Enterprise, an enterprise that obtains multidimensional information from physical or virtual objects in a connected environment. This sensing capability is expected to increase the capacity and capability of the enterprise in responding to sustainability challenges. This paper proposes a research framework as an alternative guide for researchers to produce various artifacts or theories to realize The Sensing Enterprise for sustainability achievement. The method used in developing the framework is modification/adaptation of transdisciplinary research model and information system research model. This framework has three main area consist of scientific base, enterprise architecture research process and sustainability achievement.

State-of-the-practice in analyzing enterprises’ business ecosystems

Business ecosystems are gaining more relevance both in research and in practice. The analysis of business ecosystems is thereby a data intense process. To better understand the current state-of-the-practice within enterprises addressing the analysis of business ecosystem we conducted an online survey asking participants about their division of labor, collection, documentation and processing of business ecosystem related data. 52 experts from mainly German based companies completed the questionnaire stating, inter alia, that the main data sources in use are internal company information sources and online search engines, and additionally that the time-consuming process of collecting and documenting business ecosystem related information is perceived as a major challenge in the context of business ecosystem analysis.