Towards Formalizing Virtual Enterprise Architecture

Transcription

1 Towards Formalizing Virtual Enterprise Architecture Amit Goel CSIT Heinz Schmidt CSIT David Gilbert Management Abstract Enterprise Architecture deals with the structure of an enterprise, relationships and interactions of its units. It provides a holistic approach to reconcile IT and Business concerns in an enterprise. Virtual Enterprises are collaborative ad-hoc alliances of multiple enterprises for a specific business opportunity. This paper looks into both the paradigms and Enterprise Architecture viewpoint of Virtual Enterprise. Service Oriented Architecture as a style of Enterprise Architecture proves to be an enabler of Virtual Enterprises at Business and Technology Levels. The three major challenges with Virtual Enterprise are flexibility, adaptability, and agility. This paper discusses Virtual Enterprise Architecture as a solution to these challenges, surveys research into formal models of Virtual Enterprise Architecture and identifies current gaps in this research. Keywords-enterprise architecture, virtual enterprise, virtual business ecosystem I. INTRODUCTION Businesses have grown in complexity and have become increasingly reliant on information systems. The advent of Internet technologies opened up opportunities and business evolved different forms such as e-commerce, e-business, supply chains and virtual enterprises. This increased the complexity and challenges for businesses as they struggled to align their IT with their strategic intent. Hence a need arose for a holistic approach to handle this complexity. In this paper, we look at the concepts of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Virtual Enterprise (VE). We discuss the capabilities of virtual enterprise architecture in solving the complexity and challenges for virtual enterprises. Then we introduce motivation for research which is focusing on the formal models for Virtual Enterprise Architecture and analysis, simulation, and visualizations thereof. II. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE EA has originated from the architectural thinking brought into usage by Architecture work in Computer Science and Information Technology. IEEE 1471 standard (ISO/IEC 42010:2007) for Architectural Description of Software Intensive systems, defines the term architecture as the fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution [1, page 3]. Building upon this definition by IEEE, TOGAF 9 describes EA as a formal description of the enterprise, which is a detailed plan at component level to guide its implementation. The plan consists of structure of components 1, their inter-relationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time [2, page 9]. Lankhorst et. al. define EA as a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realization of an enterprise s organizational structure, business processes, information systems, and infrastructure [3, page 9]. EA is thus considered a holistic expression of the enterprise in terms of key strategies. These keys strategies usually evolve from different domains of business architecture, information architecture and technology architectures. Business architecture addresses business strategy, processes, services, structure, policies and governance. Technology architecture addresses infrastructure, security, applications, technology services and middleware. Information architecture addresses ontologies, taxonomies, meta-data, master data, transaction data, information flows and other forms of data and information assets related to the enterprise. Some of these concerns are in fact cross-cutting across Business, Information and Technology Architectures. Enterprise Architecture aims to bring a coherent structure into these key strategies and align them together. We have seen a lot of interest in the field of EA over the last two decades, resulting in creation of several frameworks, models and methods. The notable among them are: 2 EA frameworks such as Zachman from Zachman Institute of Architecture [4] [6], TOGAF from The Open Group [2], DoDAF from US Department of Defence [7], MoDAF from UK Ministry of Defence [8], EA Cube from Scott Bernard [9], TEAF from US Department of Commerce [10], FEAF from US Federal Government [11], GERAM (ISO 15704: 1 The use of term component here is not elaborated by TOGAF. We consider the usage of term component in broader sense, to represent the self contained elements or units with well defined interfaces or contracts. 2 We are not mentioning Rational Unified Process (RUP), IEEE 1471, SSAD here because they are meant for Software Development and Architecture and not for Enterprise Architecture /09/$ IEEE 238

2 2000) [12], RM-ODP (ISO/IEC 10746) [13], GRAI, ARIS, CIMOSA. 3 EA methodologies such as TOGAF ADM [2], EAP [14], EA Cube Method [9] and SEAM [15]. Each of US Government Frameworks included a methodology (DODAF, FEAF, TEAF). EA modeling techniques and notations such as Archi- Mate, UEML, SysML, BPMN, ERD and IDEF. EA tools such as Abacus from Avolution, Enterprise Architect from Sparx, System Architect from IBM Telelogic, BizzDesigner from Bizzdesign, ARIS Process from IDS Scheer and Altova Enterprise from Altova. Enterprise Architecture brings multiple benefits such as architectural alignment of Business and IT [15], [16], coherence between strategy and execution [3], and collaboration among planning, operations and infrastructure. EA enables enterprises to meet the three core challenges of the information age: integration, agility and change [17]. Interestingly, these challenges are also associated with the Virtual Enterprises as we will see further in this paper. III. VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE VE is defined as a temporary collaborative network of independent enterprises, formed to exploit a particular business opportunity [18], [19]. The enterprises come together to form the VE in order to leverage core competencies, resources or the skills of each other. Often this collaborative network is supported by information technology elements at different levels such as computer networks, business process and work-flow management systems and service oriented architectures etc. The essential characteristics of VE are: Purpose: VE is formed to leverage core competencies, resources and skills of each other for a specific business opportunity [20]. Life Time: VE is ad-hoc in nature which gets dissolved as soon as the business opportunity is passed [20] [22]. Organizational Structure: VE itself owns no inventoried resources, assets, plants, factories or warehouses. These are owned by its participating entities. VE owns only a small Headquarters staff to handle administration [20]. There is no dominant partner and members can leave or join any time [23]. Legal Status: VE in itself has no separate legal existence. All the participating entities are independent legal entities that are bound by contracts only [21]. Customer Interface: The participating entities appear as one single enterprise (The VE) to the consumer [23]. Cunha and Putnik provide a detailed comparison of Virtual Enterprise with Traditional Enterprise [24]. There is a lot of confusion in the usage of terminology, but we take 3 We are excluding TAFIM and C4ISR since they are not in use any more and replaced by new ones. VE analogous to VC (Virtual Company), VO (Virtual Organization) and NO (Networked Organization) for the purpose of this paper. Further there is also confusion whether VE is a special case or a subset of Traditional Enterprise or viceversa. We do not attempt to debate on this aspect. Further the meaning of the term collaborative is also interpreted differently. Collaborative could mean sequential process or any to any connection of processes or a hybrid of peer to peer and sequential. We assume any of the above 3 depending on context and requirement. Further we also assume concurrency is permitted in Virtual Enterprises. VE has emerged from the organizational paradigms of Extended Enterprise, Virtual Community, Supply Chain and e-business. However, VE is different from these paradigms as explained in subsections below. A. Virtual Communities and VE Virtual Communities are networks of people utilizing information technology to create a web of relationships [25]. Virtual communities are created for professional (Linkedin), social (Myspace), friendship (orkut) or several other purposes. Virtual communities engage people in various ways, supported by technology, to achieve different goals such as discussions, relationship chains, private spaces and group messaging. Virtual Enterprise is an ad-hoc network of Enterprises whereas Virtual Community is a somewhat continued network of people or enterprises. The purpose of VE is to serve a unified goal of exploiting a specific business opportunity whereas the purpose of VC is to create a web of relationships. B. Extended Enterprise and VE Extended Enterprise refers to an enterprise extending its boundaries to include its suppliers, consumers and partners into collaborative networks for its own benefit [18]. The difference in EE and VE is that EE is controlled by the main participating enterprise whereas VE is controlled by a common goal or manifesto, and the participant can join or drop out of VE at any time. C. Supply Chain and VE Supply Chain (SC) refers to network of suppliers, producers, distributors and consumers of particular products and services, coming together to form a virtual demand chain in order to gain benefits, optimize, reduce costs and provide value addition [23]. Pires et. al. argue that supply chain and VE differ from each other in terms of purpose, organizational structure, duration and participation [23]. The main purpose of SC is to increase competitiveness whereas the purpose of VE is to exploit specific business opportunity. SC is stable and extends over a longer period of time, whereas VE is dynamic, ad-hoc and temporary and exists only for the lifetime of a specific business opportunity. In the case of SC, an enterprise could be exclusively participating in 239

3 just one SC depending on contracts, whereas in VE, the participant enterprise participates in multiple VEs [23]. D. ebusiness and VE ebusiness refers to extending business to leverage the electronic and specially the Internet media for different purposes such as connecting to customers (B2C), conducting business transactions (B2B) and inter-office or inter-branch communications. In fact all of the business transactions are possible to be executed virtually from the Internet except for storing goods the business still needs a physical warehouse. ebusiness refers to one single legal entity, and VE has no legal existence except the contracts between the participating entities. VE is a natural extension of e-business. E. Challenges in Virtual Enterprises Virtual Enterprises face challenges similar to other business. Some challenges are specifically important and critical for Virtual Enterprises. For example: Business Challenges Legal and contracting issues. Protection of Intellectual Property. Trust among participants since sharing of knowledge and intellectual property takes place [26]. Technology Challenges (mostly ICT) Rapid Integration of Business Processes of Participating Companies [20], [27]. Dynamic Reconfiguration of Systems [28] Change introduced by various factors such as joining and dropping of partners, market and context changes. Most of the challenge are cross-cutting such as Business Process Integration and Change Management, which are Business Challenges and issues of Trust, Security and Privacy, which are also Technology Challenges. Thus, we see that Virtual Enterprises face the critical challenges of integration, agility and change. We see Enterprise Architecture as a solution to these challenges. IV. VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE Putnik and Cunha identify Agile VE as a special case and define it as a highly dynamic reconfigurable agile networks of independent enterprises sharing all resources, including knowledge, market and customers etc., and using specific organizational architectures that introduce the enterprise s true virtual environments [29]. This definition shows the greater significance of VEA in business ecosystems. A. VEA as enablers to VE Service Oriented Architecture is a style of EA and has been studied widely in literature [16]. Services paradigm is an enabler of VE at technology and business levels. Service Component Identification, Composition and Reuse is still an area under active research and development. At technology level, SOA provides agile, reconfigurable and loosely-coupled infrastructure for enterprise integration of diverse processes and platforms of different enterprises. At business level, SOA enables Virtual Enterprises in multiple ways such as: Services Identification coupled with business componentization could make it easier and quicker to plug into most VE configurations. Service components could be reused and composed across multiple VE instances hence making it easier for business to flexibly participate in different VE at the same time. Services composition and reuse also helps VE infrastructure to quickly assemble and react to changes as they occur. B. Cost, Quality and Risk concerns in VEA Cost reduction, risk management and quality improvement, have been and will be among the primary goals of any business enterprise and Virtual Enterprise is no exception to this. At the time of creation of VE, the costs play an important role in partner selection. After creation of virtual enterprise, the VE transforms due to market context or addition and deletion of partners. These induce selection of new partners and reconfiguration of VE, thus incurring transformation costs. These costs play a big role in decision making by the CxO level stakeholder of VE. VE is similar to large scale organizations and involves complex interactions among different members, hence risks become inherent due to its distributed nature. Further, each member enterprise may have its own strategy, culture and management aspect for identification and handling of risk. Thus formal modeling and analysis of risks in VE is crucial for CxO level stakeholder. C. Formal Models of VEA Formal models describe the structure and behavior of Virtual Enterprises in terms of EA. Formal models have mathematical underpinnings. They allow detection and removal of ambiguity, inconsistency and incompleteness in VEA. They make it easier to analyze and simulate the VEA for helping in decision making. There have been some efforts in VEA modeling languages and frameworks, such as: EAML (Enterprise Architecture Modeling Language) consisting of 5 views (enterprise, computational, information, engineering, technology) [30], similar to the views in RM-ODP and aspects in IEEE CAML (EAML for Collaborative Networks) consisting of five levels (meta-model, business model, system model, technology model and detailed representations) and six focuses (data, process, link, participant, event, and goals) [31]. Levels are based on OMG MDA and focuses based on Zachman Framework. 240

4 NEML (Networked Enterprise Modeling Language) consisting of viewpoints across 3 dimensions for structuring the domain of networked enterprises. These viewpoints are (Business, ICT), (Functional, Operational), (Structure, Behavior, Artefacts) [32]. The study of EA, VE and VEA has created motivation for research. V. RESEARCH MOTIVATION FOR VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES The research in holistic representation of VE in terms of EA, i.e. Virtual Enterprise Architecture (VEA) is lacking. As shown in Table I, a quick search of scientific publication databases on 5 Jan 2009 with {EA, VE, VEA, EM, VEM} terms shows very few publications in VEA and VEM. This search makes these assumptions: All the authors contributing to this area have used one of the specified terms in Title, Abstract, Text or Keywords. The databases selected cover most of the Scientific Literature. All the results retrieved by database search engines are relevant. Table I NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS FROM DIFFERENT DATABASES Search Term Google Scholar IEEE Xplore ACM Guide Springerlink Science Direct Enterprise Architecture Virtual Enterprise 14, Enterprise Modeling 6, Virtual Enterprise Architecture Virtual Enterprise Modeling These numbers align with the previous findings that research in Formal Models of VEA is at a very nascent stage [33], [34]. Putnik and Sousa identified the lack of Formal underpinnings as a serious obstacle to effectiveness and efficiency of development and application of VE [35]. Further, in different studies conducted recently it was found that existing EA Frameworks and Models do not address the cost, change and quality concerns of CxO level stakeholders [36] [38]. These three are usually the top concerns of any CxO level decision making. Hence it becomes difficult for high level stakeholders to choose future state architecture from various available alternates due to lack of Formal Models, Analysis, Simulation and Visualization of Virtual Enterprise Architecture. Therefore the motivation for research stems from these identified gaps. The focus of work is on identifying adequate formal models for addressing cost concerns in VEA models and providing support for analysis, simulation and visualization of such formal models. VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Virtual Enterprise Architecture is a holistic approach for thinking strategically about Virtual Enterprises and solving the challenges of integration, agility and change. Recent surveys have found that CxO level stakeholders require cost, quality and change concerns to be addressed [36] by models of Virtual Enterprise Architecture. The research community is working on finding adequate formal models of Virtual Enterprise Architecture which address these top concerns of CxO level stakeholders. Moreover, our paper identifies a major gap in research in analysis, simulation and visualization of formal enterprise architecture models accessible to CxO level stakeholders. REFERENCES [1] ISO/IEC/(IEEE), ISO/IEC (IEEE Std) : Systems and Software engineering - Recomended practice for architectural description of software-intensive systems, p. 23, [2] The Open Group, TOGAF 9 - The Open Group Architecture Framework Version 9, The Open Group, USA, p. 744, [3] M. Lankhorst, Enterprise Architecture at Work: Modelling, Communication, and Analysis. Springer, [4] J. F. Sowa and J. A. Zachman, Extending and formalizing the framework for information systems architecture, IBM systems journal, vol. 31, no. 3, pp , [5] J. A. Zachman, A framework for information systems architecture, IBM systems journal, vol. 26, no. 3, pp , [6], A framework for information systems architecture, IBM systems journal, vol. 38, no. 2/3, pp , [7] Department of Defense, DoD Architecture Framework, Version 1.5, UK, [8] Ministry of Defence, UK, MODAF Minsitry of Defence Architecture Framework Version 1.2, UK, [Online]. Available: [9] S. A. Bernard, An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture, 2nd ed. AuthorHouse, [10] Department of the Treasury Chief Information Officer Council, TEAF - Treasury Enterprise Architecture Framework Version 1.0, [11] CIO Council, FEAF - Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework Version 1.1, p. 80, [12] P. Bernus, GERAM: Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology, ISO Std., [Online]. Available: bernus/taskforce/geram/ versions/geram1-6-3/geramv1.6.3.pdf [13] J. Putman, Architecting with RM-ODP. Prentice Hall PTR,

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