Enterprise architecture is a widely adopted

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1 E NTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE ure addresses the double challenge of increasing IT efficiency while continuing business innovation. Organizations can use enterprise ure frameworks to manage system complexity and align business and IT resources. Hanifa Shah and Mohamed El Kourdi Frameworks for Architecture ure is a widely adopted means for coping with organizations ever-increasing complexity and for ensuring that organizations appropriately use and optimize their technical resources. ure is an integrated and holistic vision of a system s fundamental organization, embodied in its elements (people, processes, applications, and so on), their relationships to each other and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution (IEEE Std IEEE Recommended Practice for Description of Software-Intensive Systems, IEEE, 2006). As the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure, enterprise ure reflects the integration and standardization requirements of the company s operating model to achieve business agility and profitable growth (J.W. Ross, P. Weill, and D.C. Robertson, Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution, Harvard Business School Press, 2006). ure frameworks identify the ure s scope and decompose its elements into structured layers and ural dimensions. Many private and governmental organizations have adopted such frameworks for operational use. ure first emerged as an idea in 1980 and was embodied in John Zachman s early enterprise ure framework (J.A. Zachman, A Framework for Information Systems Architecture, IBM Systems J., vol. 26, no. 3, 1987, pp ).its reemergence as a way to cope with organizations ever-increasing complexity relates to evolving new business trends and IT. Business trends comprise globalization, mergers and acquisitions, e-commerce, and customer-relationship and supply-chain management. IT trends comprise advances in Internet technologies, hardware platforms, and application and workflow servers.with the increasing importance of enterprise ure,companies such as the Open Group and IBM are offering certification opportunities in an effort to standardize an open method for IT ure. An enterprise ure approach can help align business and IT resources and conform them to fundamental principles and common methodologies governing the entire information systems development process. In that sense, ural frameworks are a convenient way to support such methodologies and separate roles that facilitate and implement these methodologies as needed. Still, many organizational and technical enterprise ure challenges remain. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE BENEFITS ure provides the fundamental technological and process infrastructure for 36 IT Pro September October 2007 Published by the IEEE Computer Society /07/$ IEEE

2 developing an IT strategy and aligning business strategies and implementations. Moreover, enterprise ure lets an organization Benefit view different aspects of the information system from various per- IT-related Complexity spectives. These different aspects management provide the guidelines for developing an information system that optimizes the organization s mission. ure can facilitate business success through the oversight Technical resource effective use of informationmanagement strategies and IT re- Knowledge management sources. Competitive advantage relies mainly on customer satisfaction, process life cycles, resource IT visibility management, task allocation and scheduling, and cost estimations. Business-related A company can use enterprise ure to organize and structure enterprise-wide information of staff turnover Reduction in impact by providing different stakeholders such as end users and system s with the appropriate Faster adaptability ural details. Furthermore, it serves as a baseline for initiating service-oriented ure and Operating procedures for interconnecting different lines improvement of business. SOA comprises the Decision making design practices and ural principles governing the delivery of IT ure by maximizing IT reusability. It helps prepare enterprises to consume software as a service by estimating the technical services the organization needs to deliver and enable business processes. From an organizational perspective, enterprise ure s benefits are both business and IT related, as Table 1 describes. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORKS ure frameworks describe a method for designing information systems in terms of a set of building blocks and how these blocks fit together. Many organizations have adopted enterprise ure frameworks for operational use such as the Architecture for Integrated Information Systems (A.-W. Scheer, Business Process Eng.: Reference Models for Industrial s,2nd ed.,springer, 1999) and the Department of Defense ure framework. In addition, the US government has adopted the federal enterprise ure as a business-driven framework to optimize key strategic areas,such as budget allocation,information sharing,performance measurement,and componentbased ure ( Federal Architecture, 2002; Table 1. Benefits of enterprise ure. Description Facilitate the scoping and coordination of programs and information systems projects. Manage complexity and describe the interdependencies in a usable manner. Identify and remove redundancy. Manage and share knowledge modularly so it can be visualized across different levels. IT resources and systems are more aligned to business strategies and are better placed for responsiveness. Capture knowledge from employees and consultants. Provide business solutions from third party organizations consistently so they can conform to the current models. Facilitate knowledge acquisition necessary for changing systems and adopting new components. Understand and model business processes. Review and reengineer processes. Represent an enterprise s layers and components modularly to let the organization make business decisions in the context of a whole instead of a stand-alone part. More specifically, enterprise ure frameworks contain a list of recommended standards and compliant products for implementing an information system. These frameworks simplify the ure s development and ensure complete coverage of the ural dimensions of the designed solutions through a common terminology. ure frameworks are language independent in that they provide generic concepts and common terminology, letting stakeholders communicate without making any assumptions about each others language. Pragmatically, enterprise ure frameworks play dual roles. As Figure 1 illustrates, they serve as documentation and component-specification tools, and facilitate enterprise planning and problem solving. Component-specification tools By representing an information system as a set of building blocks, enterprise ure frameworks relate the September October 2007 IT Pro 37

3 ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE layers domains required information system dimensions such as business processes, data, and organization units to different perspectives at certain levels of abstraction.these perspectives rely mainly on differences in stakeholders views of the ure at different levels of detail.as component-specification tools, enterprise ure frameworks document the ural layers, domains, models, and artifacts. ure frameworks are typically decomposed into three ural layers (H. Jonkers et al., Towards a Language for Coherent Architecture Descriptions, Proc. 7th IEEE Int l Distributed Object Computing Conf. [EDOC], IEEE CS Press, 2003, p. 28): The business layer describes the business entities (such as business processes and relevant business information) and how they interact with each other to achieve enterprise-wide objectives. The application layer determines the data elements and software applications that support the business layer. The technology infrastructure layer comprises the hardware platforms and communication infrastructure that supports the applications. Informational, behavioral, and structural aspects naturally characterize such layers. Because organizations consist of several units, the structural aspects determine these units static decomposition into subunits. The behavioral aspects show behavior manifested in the sequence of activities and business processes performed to produce the needed services. These units eventually could exchange information to perform business tasks. Each layer naturally consists of several domains reflecting organizations information, behavioral, and structural 38 IT Pro September October 2007 Figure 1. Role of enterprise ure frameworks. As component specification tools models artifacts ure frameworks As planning and problem solving tools Baseline ure Target ure roadmaps Transition plan aspects. These domains specify the ural aspects, such as process, product, information, technical, and application ures. Indeed, these domains separate the ural concerns and reflect different enterprise ure stakeholders views of the ure. For example, the process domain, which is a part of the business layer, describes business processes or functions offering the products or services to an organization. Different ural models such as business process models, value chain diagrams, and organization charts typically describe and document the ural domains. models serve as a basis for documenting the different ures by annotating the artifacts and their interrelationships. artifacts represent the necessary constructs and ural elements (data, business processes, resources, events, and so on) that represent the real-world objects needed to design distinct model types. Planning tools ure frameworks provide a holistic view of enterprise ure through hierarchical layering. This approach implies alignment of the business, application, and technology infrastructure layers. In addition, such frameworks let organizations make business decisions and plan the ure in the context of the whole rather than stand-alone parts. In other words, enterprise ure frameworks use abstractions to simplify and isolate simple information system aspects or dimensions without losing sense of the enterprise s complexity as a whole. As planning tools, enterprise ure frameworks entail baseline and target ures, ural roadmaps, and transition plans. The baseline ure (the as-is view) encompasses the different layers and existing components (models, diagrams, documents, and so on). This ure serves as a starting point for identifying relationships between different components as well as gaps that should be filled to improve organizational performance.the target ure (the to be view) specifies the new enterprise ure components and the strategic initiatives that the organization should perform to bridge the gaps and ensure competitive advantage. This ure should also identify the IT resources and technological infrastructure needed to support the new components in integrating the organization structure, business processes, data, and technical resources. roadmaps represent the baseline ure s intermediary alternatives while mitigating the

4 risks and analyzing existing gaps during the shift to the target ure.these roadmaps highlight the ural milestones performed prior to reaching the target ure. ure transition plans are merely specifications of the as-is and to-be views in terms of managing the ural transition s feasibility. Such plans could include risk assessment, gap analysis, and the transition s supporting resources. More specifically, transition plans document the activities undertaken during the shift from the baseline to the target ure. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE ROLES From an enterprise ure perspective, several roles are extremely important in developing information systems.the major roles, particularly from a governmental viewpoint, commonly include chief enterprise, enterprise business s, enterprise IT s, infrastructure s, system s, and data s (A Practical Guide to Federal Architecture, CIO Council, 2001; bestpractices/bpeaguide.pdf). Figure 2 shows the hierarchical structure of these roles and the level of detail characterizing an information system s development at each level. As the figure shows, the chief enterprise is interested in the high-level strategic implications of an information system s development, while enterprise s are interested in its planning. Chief enterprise s operate as the enterprise ure repository s owner. They also act as the system s champion because they interact directly with the chief information officer in setting up the ure policy. Typically, chief enterprise s direct and guide team members in optimizing the baseline ure and developing the target ure. As leaders of the evaluation, selection, and integration processes of IT resources in enterprise ure, chief enterprise s must be up-to-date with the new technologies, standards, and methodologies. Mainly, they re responsible for project planning, which includes scheduling tasks, allocating resources, and monitoring the development and maintenance processes of enterprise ure projects (CIO Council, 2001). Consequently, they must understand the business objectives, drivers, and principles so they can translate the business strategy into the technical vision and business requirements ( Architects Terminology & Certification Levels, Inst. for Architecture Developments, 2005, info/ea_certification.htm). Figure 2. Hierarchical structure of enterprise ure roles. data business Chief enterprise infrastructure Strategic enterprise scope IT High level business/it scope system Information systems development tools Application scope business s strive to analyze and document business processes, scenarios, and information flow by identifying key solutions for aligning IT-related components with the business (CIO Council, 2001).Their main activities include creating business process models to envision and establish boundaries for processes and other ural elements, and overseeing the allocated resources. They accomplish this by assuring the integration of all business standards, models, and methodologies. IT s analyze and document systems, internal and external interfaces, and data flow (CIO Council, 2001). They support enterprise ure documentation by ensuring that technical standards and technologies will enable system-related qualities such as availability, scalability, and recoverability. In addition to application selection and implementation activities, they re responsible for developing, designing, and evaluating ural models of current and proposed systems with the collaboration of enterprise business s. Data s analyze and design database-related enterprise ure components and set data policies such as data management, storage, and access. As such, providing opportunities for data reuse and balancing data centralization and data replication is the data s central role. Infrastructure s, on the other hand, document and analyze system environments, including network communications, operating systems, and middleware components. System s mainly collaborate with enterprise IT s in selecting suitable application frameworks and adopting appropriate standards for systems quality assurance.they also prepare a migration plan when their organization intends to replace existing systems with new systems. September October 2007 IT Pro 39

5 ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE The exact titles of these roles vary from organization to organization.the roles depend on organization size because they rely on the level of detail in the enterprise ure to be addressed during the development of information system projects. More specifically, these roles aren t deterministic because they rely mainly on the organization type and how the organization governs the separation of enterprise ure concerns. In large multinational organizations, these roles are often embodied in committees or groups. This maximizes knowledge sharing and strengthens crossorganizational interaction between parties, thus enhancing the decision-making strategy. CHALLENGES Although enterprise ure is recognized as affording the necessary infrastructure for building information systems, several challenges remain. These challenges stem from the fact that enterprise ure hasn t reached maturity (A.Wegmann, On the Systemic Architecture Methodology [SEAM], Proc. Int l Conf. Information Systems, ICEIS, 2003, pp ). We highlight enterprise ure challenges from two perspectives: enterprise ure frameworks and organization structure. Most existing enterprise ure frameworks aren t reactive to business strategy changes because they can t perceive changes in their environment (D. Judge, Agent Enhanced Workflow, BT Technical J., vol. 16, no. 3, 1998, pp ). In addition, the absence of traceability in enterprise ure frameworks yields an unbalanced ure focused on one view (Wegmann, 2003). Consequently, putting these frameworks into operation can be tedious. Some enterprise ure stakeholders might also be uncomfortable with the existing frameworks because they aren t object-oriented, so are difficult to relate to Unified Modeling Language (UML). Moreover, the heterogeneous theories and notations of enterprise ure models yield an unclear picture of how an organization can meet business requirements across multiple information systems. Because enterprise ure is strategically driven, models describing the current and target ures should be concise and well documented to facilitate understanding of data flows in enterprise ure (S. Kaisler, F. Armour, and M. Valivullah, Architecting: Critical Problems, Proc. 38th Hawaii Int l Conf. System Sciences, IEEE CS Press, 2005, p. 224b). Many of these methodologies also lack evaluation or assessment metrics of enterprise ure elements 40 IT Pro September October 2007 More formally, in large commercial organizations, the layer model doesn t efficiently advocate the cross-organizational interactions between business entities. such as reliability and integrity. Finally, the existing frameworks don t sufficiently consider the strategic needs of cutting-edge enterprises such as Novartis, Amazon.com, Google, and Shell. Many of these organizations have their own ongoing initiatives for building and implementing enterprise ure to meet their current and future business needs. More formally, in large commercial organizations, the layer model doesn t efficiently advocate the crossorganizational interactions between business entities. Consequently, an ecosystems-oriented ure has emerged to tackle problems such as responsiveness to changes in business requirements. Indeed, the ecosystem enterprise ure model aims to create dynamic and interactive enterprises that evolve over time by filling the gaps between internal and external environments, such as customers, suppliers, and business partners. However, this approach is still under development and hasn t been put in operational use. From an organizational perspective, project teams aren t always aware that an enterprise ure program exists. Moreover, when one does exist, not everyone follows it, because people often resist changing their norms and working standards (J. McGovern et al., A Practical Guide to Architecture, Prentice Hall, 2003). Despite the fact that business modelers and IT people need to work together and look at the big picture, stakeholders models can be narrow in their outlook and focus on specific information system aspects, regardless of other stakeholders realities and perspectives. Because different enterprise ure stakeholders need perspectives reflecting their view of an information system, an organization should use multiple views to separate the key concerns. Furthermore, people use different tools to produce different models, resulting in an ambiguous documentation of the ure. Making enterprise ure usable, applicable, and practical for a particular organization requires significant effort in terms of defining the formal steps for implementing the ure and complying with different stakeholders requirements in the information system s development. For usability, no explicit separation of concerns and roles within existing enterprise ure frameworks reflect the distinct perspectives of enterprise ure stakeholders.as far as enterprise ure practicality is concerned, there is no rigid approach to manage and develop information systems in the context of enterprise ure because no formal steps exist for defining, maintaining, and implementing enterprise archi-

tecture. However, applicability requires that information project requirements are validated and comply with all stakeholders views of the ure throughout the project s development life cycle.

6 tecture. However, applicability requires that information project requirements are validated and comply with all stakeholders views of the ure throughout the project s development life cycle. The many views and models in the underlying enterprise ure repositories make scalability another shortcoming of enterprise ure. This makes it difficult to get an accurate picture of enterprise ural information and to exploit it for efficient decision making. The high dimensionality of the ural models also makes it difficult to check the coherence of enterprise ure elements. Moreover, because of the tension between ongoing operations and new systems, maintaining enterprise ure once it s been described and developed is also hard (Kaisler, Armour, and Valivullah, 2005). Researchers haven t sufficiently considered enterprise ure simplicity, which is a key issue in mitigating the duplication of effort and resources. Yet, the ure lacks mechanisms to assess the effect of ural changes, which hinders the ability to predict such changes. These challenges are areas of research opportunity in the enterprise ure arena. As enterprise ure has proven valuable for organizing and structuring enterprise-wide information, organizations have recognized knowledge management s use in monitoring and planning this information. Our ongoing work in this area focuses on developing a conceptual knowledge management model to facilitate an enterprise ural approach, with an emphasis on strategic knowledge support. Such a model would support knowledge discovery and facilitate the exploitation of information captured through the application of enterprise ure frameworks. Hanifa Shah is a professor of information systems, head of the Informatics and Knowledge Management Group, and a strategic IT consultant to Britvic Soft Drinks. Contact her at h.shah@staffs.ac.uk. Mohamed El Kourdi is a doctoral student in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering, and Technology at Staffordshire University and a member of the Informatics and Knowledge Management Group. Contact him at m.elkourdi@ staffs.ac.uk. Silver Bullet Security Podcast series Sponsored by and Check out the Silver Bullet Security Podcast with host Gary McGraw, author of Software Security, Exploiting Software, and Building Secure Software! This free series features in-depth interviews with security gurus, including Annie Antón of The PrivacyPlace.org Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins Marcus Ranum of Tenable Security Mike Howard of Microsoft, and Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security Stream it online or download to your ipod... September October 2007 IT Pro 41

Design of an Integrated Model for Development of Business and Enterprise Systems

Design of an Integrated Model for Development of Business and Enterprise Systems International Journal of Research Studies in Computer Science and Engineering (IJRSCSE) Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2015, PP 50-57 ISSN 2349-4840 (Print) & ISSN 2349-4859 (Online) www.arcjournals.org Design