Planning strategically, designing architecturally : a framework for digital library services

In an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred. As a trusted information provider, libraries are in an advantageous position to respond, but this requires integrated strategic and enterprise architecture planning, for information technology (IT) has evolved from a support role to a strategic role, providing the core management systems, communication networks, and delivery channels of the modern library. Further, IT components do not function in isolation from one another, but are interdependent elements of distributed and multidimensional systems encompassing people, processes, and technologies, which must consider social, economic, legal, organisational, and ergonomic requirements and relationships, as well as being logically sound from a technical perspective. Strategic planning provides direction, while enterprise architecture strategically aligns and holistically integrates business and information system architectures. While challenging, such integrated planning should be regarded as an opportunity for the library to evolve as an enterprise in the digital age, or at minimum, to simply keep pace with societal change and alternative service providers. Without strategy, a library risks being directed by outside forces with independent motivations and inadequate understanding of its broader societal role. Without enterprise architecture, it risks technological disparity, redundancy, and obsolescence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this conceptual paper provides an integrated framework for strategic and architectural planning of digital library services. The concept of the library as an enterprise is also introduced

An Integrated Enterprise Architecture Framework for Business-IT Alignment

When different businesses want to integrate part of their processes and IT, they need to relate their enterprise architecture frameworks. An enterprise architecture framework (EAF) is a conceptual framework for describing the architecture of a business and its information technology (IT), and their alignment. In this paper we provide an integration among some well-known EAFs (Zachman, Four-domain, TOGAF and RM-ODP) and produce an integrated EAF (IEAF) that can be used as common framework to communicate about EAFs of differrent businesses and relate them to each other

Competences of IT Architects

The field of architecture in the digital world uses a plethora of terms to refer to different kinds of architects, and recognises a confusing variety of competences that these architects are required to have. Different service providers use different terms for similar architects and even if they use the same term, they may mean something different. This makes it hard for customers to know what competences an architect can be expected to have.\ud \ud This book combines competence profiles of the NGI Platform for IT Professionals, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), as well as a number of Dutch IT service providers in a comprehensive framework. Using this framework, the book shows that notwithstanding a large variety in terminology, there is convergence towards a common set of competence profiles. In other words, when looking beyond terminological differences by using the framework, one sees that organizations recognize similar types of architects, and that similar architects in different organisations have similar competence profiles. The framework presented in this book thus provides an instrument to position architecture services as offered by IT service providers and as used by their customers.\ud \ud The framework and the competence profiles presented in this book are the main results of the special interest group “Professionalisation” of the Netherlands Architecture Forum for the Digital World (NAF). Members of this group, as well as students of the universities of Twente and Nijmegen have contributed to the research on which this book is based

Methodological Approaches to Modeling Information Architecture of the Organization in the Conditions of Digital Economy

It is significant for businesses, especially in the digital economy, the solution of theoretical and methodological justifications and the development of practical recommendations for building an organization\u27s information architecture as a holistic description of its key strategies, related to business, information, application systems and technologies, and also their impact on the functions and business processes of an organization. The article discusses issues, related to methodological approaches to modeling an organization\u27s information architectureб using information management tools to help manage innovation in information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT). The relevance of organizational provisions to determine the way, in which a business entity\u27s business model is functionally integrated with the IS architecture is substantiated. The consideration and analysis of the use of industrial standards for describing the architecture of an organization, adopted by such institutions as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), The Open Group, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), etc. reveal that none of these standards is dominant and does not provide teams, responsible for the architecture development with all the tools, necessary from the methodological point of view and from the point of view of the templates, used to describe the architecture. Recommendations are given on the theoretical and methodological substantiation and construction of the information architecture of an organization as a complete description of its key strategies related to business, information, application systems and technologies, as well as their impact on the functions and business processes of an organization

Management and architecture click: The FAD(E)E Framework.

Enterprises are living things. They constantly need to be (re-)architected in order to achieve the necessary agility, alignment and integration. This paper gives a high-level overview of how companies can go about doing 'enterprise architecture' in the context of both the classic (isolated) enterprise and the Extended Enterprise. By discussing the goals that are pursued in an enterprise architecture effort we reveal some basic requirements that can be put on the process of architecting the enterprise. The relationship between managing and architecting the enterprise is discussed and clarified in the FAD(E)E, the Framework for the Architectural Development of the (Extended) Enterprise.Management; Architecture; Framework;

The Country-specific Organizational and Information Architecture of ERP Systems at Globalised Enterprises

The competition on the market forces companies to adapt to the changing environment. Most recently, the economic and financial crisis has been accelerating the alteration of both business and IT models of enterprises. The forces of globalization and internationalization motivate the restructuring of business processes and consequently IT processes. To depict the changes in a unified framework, we need the concept of Enterprise Architecture as a theoretical approach that deals with various tiers, aspects and views of business processes and different layers of application, software and hardware systems. The paper outlines a wide-range theoretical background for analyzing the re-engineering and re-organization of ERP systems at international or transnational companies in the middle-sized EU member states. The research carried out up to now has unravelled the typical structural changes, the models for internal business networks and their modification that reflect the centralization, decentralization and hybrid approaches. Based on the results obtained recently, a future research program has been drawn up to deepen our understanding of the trends within the world of ERP systems.Information System; ERP; Enterprise Resource Planning; Enterprise Architecture; Globalization; Centralization; Decentralization; Hybrid

ClouNS - A Cloud-native Application Reference Model for Enterprise Architects

The capability to operate cloud-native applications can generate enormous business growth and value. But enterprise architects should be aware that cloud-native applications are vulnerable to vendor lock-in. We investigated cloud-native application design principles, public cloud service providers, and industrial cloud standards. All results indicate that most cloud service categories seem to foster vendor lock-in situations which might be especially problematic for enterprise architectures. This might sound disillusioning at first. However, we present a reference model for cloud-native applications that relies only on a small subset of well standardized IaaS services. The reference model can be used for codifying cloud technologies. It can guide technology identification, classification, adoption, research and development processes for cloud-native application and for vendor lock-in aware enterprise architecture engineering methodologies

Modeling Virtual Organization Architecture with the Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology

While Enterprise Architecture Modeling (EAM) methodologies become more and more popular, an EAM methodology tailored to the needs of virtual organizations (VO) is still to be developed. Among the most popular EAM methodologies, TOGAF has been chosen as the basis for a new EAM methodology taking into account characteristics of VOs presented in this paper. In this new methodology, referred as Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology (VOBM), concepts developed within the ECOLEAD project, e.g. the concept of Virtual Breeding Environment (VBE) or the VO creation schema, serve as fundamental elements for development of VOBM. VOBM is a generic methodology that should be adapted to a given VBE. VOBM defines the structure of VBE and VO architectures in a service-oriented environment, as well as an architecture development method for virtual organizations (ADM4VO). Finally, a preliminary set of tools and methods for VOBM is given in this paper.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

A Framework for Enterprise Security Architecture and Its Application in Information Security Incident Management

An enterprise architecture (EA) plan is a long-term view or blueprint for an organization. It is a very important blueprint for balancing business and Information Technology (IT) and for adding value to an organization. Security is also nowadays an essential dimension for enterprises. It can prevent confidential information from being leaked, and/or stolen, lost succumbing to other serious disasters. There are many studies focusing on EA or on specific aspects of security. However, there are very few studies focusing on enterprise security architecture. This paper focuses on integrating the security dimension into the Zachman EA framework (Zachman, 2007) and is intended to serve as an enterprise security framework (ESA) to assist an organization in successfully and effectively implementing security. The efficacy of the ESA implementation is illustrated through an application in an organization