Selmin Nurcan – University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France
Rainer Schmidt – University of Applied Sciences, Aalen, Germany
There is a more and more common understanding, that not the ownership
of information technology resources but their management is the
foundation for sustainable competitive advantage [1]. According to Ross et al. [2],
smart companies define how they (will) do business (using an operating
model) and design the processes and infrastructure critical to their
current and future operations (enterprise architecture).
The management of information technology
resources should be done with the application of engineering principles,
called enterprise engineering. Enterprise Engineering allows deriving
the Enterprise Architecture from the enterprise goals and strategy and
aligning it with the enterprise resources as shown in figure 1, but it
may also be supported by the Enterprise Architecture if the latter is
documented. Enterprise architecture [2], [3]
aims (i) to understand the interactions and all kind of articulations
between business and information technology, (ii) to define how to align
business components and IT components, as well as business strategy and
IT strategy, and more particularly (iii) to develop and support a
common understanding and sharing of those purposes of interest.
Enterprise architecture is used to map the enterprise goal and strategy
to the enterprise’s resources (actors, assets, IT supports) and to take
into account the evolution of this mapping. It also provides
documentation on the assignment of enterprise resources to the
enterprise goals and strategy. To this end, advantageous patterns (best
practices) can be reused and alternative design solutions can be
compared. Furthermore, enterprise architecture may be checked for
compliance with laws, regulatory rules etc. Finally, enterprise
architecture facilitates the measurement the performance and efficiency
of the resources used.
There are different paradigms for creating
enterprise architecture. The most important regarding the purpose of
this workshop is to encapsulate the functionalities provided by IT
resources as services, as shown in figure 2. By this means, it is
possible to clearly describe the contributions of IT resources both in
terms of functionality and quality and to define a service-oriented
enterprise architecture. Service-oriented enterprise architecture easily
integrates wide-spread technological approaches such as SOA or emerging
ones as the cloud computing because they also use service as
structuring paradigm. Service-oriented enterprise engineering further
develops the enterprise engineering approach selecting service as
governing paradigm. The enterprise goals and strategies are mapped to a
service-oriented enterprise architecture, as shown in figure 1.
Figure 1: Service-oriented Enterprise Engineering
Service-oriented enterprise engineering further develops the enterprise engineering approach selecting service as governing paradigm. The enterprise goals and strategies are mapped to a service-oriented enterprise architecture, as shown in Figure 2.
Service-oriented enterprise architecture differentiates four layers of
services, as shown in figure 2. Thus, its scope is much broader than the
scope of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) and also includes
services not accessible through software such as business and
infrastructure services. Services of different layers may be
interconnected in service (value) nets to provide higher level services
- Business services are services which directly support business processes. They may be further differentiated into those visible to the customer and those that are not. Business processes can also be developed dynamically (on-the-fly) using business services which are available in a repository for a given business domain. An example is call-centre services provided by an external service provider.
- Software services exist as two types. There are human-oriented applications which are provided as Software as a Service. And there are application services which are part of so-called Service-Oriented-Architectures [6] that are a popular paradigm for creating enterprise software [7]. A service in the context of SOA is a special kind of interface for an encapsulated unit of software [6].
- Platform Services provide support of the development of applications. They provide services for the execution of applications, middleware stacks, web servers etc.
- Infrastructure services are more hardware-flavoured services which are provided using computers. They may have a human addressee but contain many infrastructure services such as providing computing power, storage etc. They are an important topic in management and practice collections such as ITILV3 [8] or standards such as ISO/IEC 20000 have gained a high popularity.
References
[1] F.J. Mata, W.L. Fuerst, und J.B. Barney, “Information Technology and Sustained Competitive Advantage: A Resource-Based Analysis,” MIS Quarterly, vol. 19, Dez. 1995, S. 487-505.
[2] J.W. Ross, P. Weill, und D. Robertson, Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution, Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
[3] A. Wegmann, “Systemic Enterprise Architecture Methodology (SEAM),” SEAM). Published at the International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems 2003 (ICEIS 2003, Citeseer, 2003, S. 483-490.
[4] G. Allmendinger und R. Lombreglia, “Four strategies for the age of smart services,” Harvard business review, vol. 83, Okt. 2005, S. 131-4, 136, 138 passim.
[5] M.A. Cusumano, The business of software, Free Press, .
[6] M.P. Papazoglou und W. Heuvel, “Service oriented architectures: approaches, technologies and research issues,” The VLDB Journal, vol. 16, 2007, S. 389-415.
[7] OASIS, “Reference Model for Service Oriented
Architecture 1.0,” Aug. 2006.
[8] Ogc, Itil Lifecycle Publication Suite, Version 3: Continual Service Improvement, Service Operation, Service Strategy, Service Transition, Service Design: Service ... Operation AND Continual Service Improvement, Stationery Office Books, 2007.
