2014

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How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition

Information technology is revolutionizing products. Once composed solely of mechanical and electrical parts, products have become complex systems that combine hardware, sensors, data storage, microprocessors, software, and connectivity in myriad ways. These smart, connected products – made possible by vast improvements in processing power and device miniaturization and by the network benefits of ubiquitous wireless connectivity – have unleashed a new era of competition. Smart, connected products offer exponentially expanding opportunities for new functionality, far greater reliability, much higher product utilization, and capabilities that cut across and transcend traditional product boundaries. The changing nature of products is also disrupting value chains, forcing companies to rethink and retool nearly everything they do internally. Smart, connected products raise a broad set of new strategic choices for companies about how value is created and captured, how to work with traditional partners and what new partnerships will be required, and how to secure competitive advantage as the new capabilities reshape industry boundaries. For many firms, smart, connected products will force the fundamental question: What business am I in? This article provides a framework for developing strategy and achieving competitive advantage in a smart, connected world.

From Enterprise Architecture to Business Ecosystem Architecture: Stages and challenges for extending architectures beyond organizational boundaries

Today, Enterprises act in an increasingly interconnected world and in different kinds of collaborative networks. They are part of business ecosystems in which they interact with their customers, partners and competitors. The processes of analyzing and planning the intertwinement of business and IT architecture within enterprises has been successfully supported by enterprise architecture management (EAM) approaches. In this paper, we analyze four cases from different industries (health care, logistics, retail, and education) and argue that the intra-organizational concepts of enterprise architectures (EA) and EAM need to be extended to grasp the challenges of the enterprises’ interconnectedness. Beyond the known concepts of extended enterprise architecture and federated architectures, we define five stages of extended architectures. Additionally, we describe challenges and existing solutions, which are relevant for this extended perspective.

The Digital Enterprise: The Moves and Motives of the Digital Leaders

This book reflects Karl-Heinz Streibich’s optimism about the technology industry and the richness of his connections with industry thought leaders. Throughout the book you will encounter the vision of Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0) that is driving innovation across a wide spectrum of industries around the globe. With over 20 examples provided, you will read about GE’s vision of the Industrial Internet and how it will bring massive efficiencies to aviation, utilities, and many other industries. You will discover how banks and insurance companies and oil companies and museums and casinos are innovating using a wide range of other technologies. Get ready to be inspired by some of the top companies in the world that are on the forefront of transforming into a Digital Enterprise.

Building Enterprise Architecture

Savvy organizations know their Enterprise Architects enable business outcomes. This formerly tactical IT “job” is today a strategic position. Enterprise architects increasingly report outside of IT to the CFO, CMO or office of the CEO. Why this quiet elevation? Enterprise Architects work at the leading edge of organizations; in the zone where business capabilities are born. This is why today’s CEO’s collaborate with their Enterprise Architects when evaluating short and long term strategies. Enterprise Architects continuously blend business and technical capabilities to meet the ongoing demand for new capabilities. If it sounds like ninja smoke…. It is… and smart organizations already know it works. Making Enterprise Architecture work involves mutual understanding and trust between EA’s and CEO’s. This is the first in a planned series of books designed to help maximize investments in Enterprise Architecture. The topics are based on executive’s questions and issues addressed in the author’s experience teaching enterprise architecture to executives and in delivering EA solutions to large organizations. This first volume begins with basic connecting points between executive and architect and discusses effective techniques for moving architecture to the enterprise level in the organization. The centerpiece in this volume is the ERAM (Enterprise Resource Allocation Management) concept. This volume isn’t intended to answer every possible question on Enterprise Architecture. It is intended to start the dialogue in a productive way…

Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture: Strategies to Transform Information Systems in the Era of Big Data

Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture is a practical hands-on instruction manual for enterprise architects. This book prepares you to better engage IT, management, and business users by equipping you with the tools and knowledge you need to address the most common enterprise architecture challenges. You will come away with a pragmatic understanding of and approach to enterprise architecture and actionable ideas to transform your enterprise. Experienced enterprise architect James V. Luisi generously shares life cycle architectures, transaction path analysis frameworks, and more so you can save time, energy, and resources on your next big project. As an enterprise architect, you must have relatable frameworks and excellent communication skills to do your job. You must actively engage and support a large enterprise involving a hundred architectural disciplines with a modest number of subject matter experts across business, information systems, control systems, and operations architecture. They must achieve their mission using the influence of ideas and business benefits expressed in simple terms so that any audience can understand what to do and why. Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture gives you the tools to accomplish your goals in less time with fewer resources. It expand your Enterprise Architecture skills so you can do more in less time with less money with the priceless tips presented. It understand the cost of creating new Enterprise Architecture disciplines and contrast those costs to letting them go unmanaged. It includes 10 life cycle architectures so that you can properly assess the ROI of performing activities such as outsourcing, insourcing, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, and more. It complete appendix of eight transaction path analysis frameworks provide DBA guidelines for proper physical database design.