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

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's 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's 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's 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

Perceived Ontological Weaknesses of Process Modeling Techniques: Further Evidence

The Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS) is a popular framework for integrated process modeling. Previous research analysed ARIS using an ontology developed by Bunge, Wand and Weber. The results of this study have been summarized in six propositions. This paper reports on insights gained from an empirical study testing these evaluative propositions. The study is conducted with post-graduate students as well as with experienced users of ARIS. Even when considering all five views of ARIS, modelers have problems representing business rules and the scope and boundary of systems. Surprisingly, even though it is completely ontologically redundant, users still find the function view useful in modeling

Domain architecture a design framework for system development and integration

The ever growing complexity of software systems has revealed many short-comings in existing software engineering practices and has raised interest in architecture-driven software development. A system\u27s architecture provides a model of the system that suppresses implementation detail, allowing the architects to concentrate on the analysis and decisions that are most critical to structuring the system to satisfy its requirements. Recently, interests of researchers and practi-tioners have shifted from individual system architectures to architectures for classes of software systems which provide more general, reusable solutions to the issues of overall system organization, interoperability, and allocation of services to system components. These generic architectures, such as product line architectures and domain architectures, promote reuse and interoperability, and create a basis for cost effective construction of high-quality systems. Our focus in this dissertation is on domain architectures as a means of development and integration of large-scale, domain-specific business software systems. Business imperatives, including flexibility, productivity, quality, and ability to adapt to changes, have fostered demands for flexible, coherent and enterprise--wide integrated business systems. The components of such systems, developed separately or purchased off the shelf, need to cohesively form an overall compu-tational environment for the business. The inevitable complexity of such integrated solutions and the highly-demanding process of their construction, management, and evolution support require new software engineering methodologies and tools. Domain architectures, prescribing the organization of software systems in a business domain, hold a promise to serve as a foundation on which such integrated business systems can be effectively constructed. To meet the above expectations, software architectures must be properly defined, represented, and applied, which requires suitable methodologies as well as process and tool support. Despite research efforts, however, state-of-the-art methods and tools for architecture-based system development do not yet meet the practical needs of system developers. The primary focus of this dissertation is on developing methods and tools to support domain architecture engineering and on leveraging architectures to achieve improved system development and integration in presence of increased complexity. In particular, the thesis explores issues related to the following three aspects of software technology: system complexity and software architectures as tools to alleviate complexity; domain architectures as frameworks for construction of large scale, flexible, enterprise-wide software systems; and architectural models and representation techniques as a basis for good” design. The thesis presents an archi-tectural taxonomy to help categorize and better understand architectural efforts. Furthermore, it clarifies the purpose of domain architectures and characterizes them in detail. To support the definition and application of domain architectures we have developed a method for domain architecture engineering and representation: GARM-ASPECT. GARM, the Generic Architecture Reference Model, underlying the method, is a system of modeling abstractions, relations and recommendations for building representations of reference software architectures. The model\u27s focus on reference and domain architectures determines its main distinguishing features: multiple views of architectural elements, a separate rule system to express constraints on architecture element types, and annotations such as “libraries” of patterns and “logs” of guidelines. ASPECT is an architecture description language based on GARM. It provides a normalized vocabulary for representing the skeleton of an architecture, its structural view, and establishes a framework for capturing archi-tectural constraints. It also allows extensions of the structural view with auxiliary information, such as behavior or quality specifications. In this respect, ASPECT provides facilities for establishing relationships among different specifications and gluing them together within an overall architectural description. This design allows flexibility and adaptability of the methodology to the specifics of a domain or a family of systems. ASPECT supports the representation of reference architectures as well as individual system architectures. The practical applicability of this method has been tested through a case study in an industrial setting. The approach to architecture engineering and representation, presented in this dissertation, is pragmatic and oriented towards software practitioners. GARM-ASPECT, as well as the taxonomy of architectures are of use to architects, system planners and system engineers. Beyond these practical contributions, this thesis also creates a more solid basis for expbring the applicability of architectural abstractions, the practicality of representation approaches, and the changes required to the devel-opment process in order to achieve the benefits from an architecture-driven software technology

Remote Health Service System based on Struts2 and Hibernate

Traditional web applications were developed using Servlets or Java Server Pages (JSP). Maintainability and extensibility became a problem with this approach as the business logic and presentation logic were mixed in a single file. Model View Controller (MVC) is a popular and powerful design pattern for developing web applications as it clearly separates the main responsibilities (business logic, presentation and request handling), which facilitates the scalability and extensibility of the applications. Struts2 framework has gained popularity in the recent times as it realized the MVC architecture. It is an elegant, extensible framework for developing enterprise level Java web applications. Data persistence is a significant task in any web application. Many persistence frameworks have gained importance recently. Hibernate is one such framework that can be easily integrated with Struts2. In this project, a Remote Health Service System is implemented that can be used by patients and medical experts for remote medical diagnosis. Patient registration, medical query submission, query response and query search are the main functionalities of this system. The application is modular, complete and flexible as its architecture is based on the integration of Struts2 and Hibernate frameworks. It has a multi-layered architecture with the Presentation, Controller and Service layers implemented using Struts2 and the Data Access layer implemented using Hibernate

Restructuring the German Outpatient Health Care System: An Economic and IT Perspective

Among other proposals to reform the German outpatient health care system the establishment of networks of cooperating physicians (doctors’ networks) has found high and controversial consideration in recent years. In this paper we analyze doctors’ networks both from an economic perspective, particularly with a view on network strategies, and the perspective of supporting information technologies. Our main conclusions are that the viability of doctors’ networks critically depends on trust-building mechanisms like the restriction of the network in size and complexity and the application of fair profit allocation rules. Concerning information technology the implementation and use of highly integrated interorganizational systems appears most promising. We propose an architecture of such systems. It integrates information technology along the medical, the business and the communication systems dimension and serves as a vehicle for efficient use of shared patient data and other network resources, knowledge creation, fair profit allocation, improved business control and a high level of integrity vis-a-vis the patient

Business process management in functional organizations : an empirical case study from the Norwegian offshore supply industry

The business process concept is considered powerful, and business processes are widely used in many areas that include not only IS, IT, enterprise architecture, and business process management but also quality and safety management and many industries such as production and service industries (e.g., telecom), supply chains, and logistics. At the same time, implementation and institutionalization of business process management (BPM) has not reached its expected success and is still not generally used by management as a perspective on business and organizations. The research literature argues that BPM should be integrated into the overall organizational management control system that incorporates all the tools, mechanisms, methods, infrastructure, and procedures for the alignment of operations with strategic objectives and development of organizational process orientation. However, much of the emphasis in the BPM literature and in industry is on BPM from an IS viewpoint and BPM as process supporting software. The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how management systems handle a process perspective, particularly how a process view and BPM exist alongside hierarchical structures.  For this aim, the study draws from an exploratory case study of two Norwegian shipping companies that provide supply services for offshore installations

A meta model framework for risk analysis, diagnosis and simulation

International audienceThe goal of risk analysis is to identify events that may have one or several undesirable consequences on a system, and to assess the likelihood and severity of these consequences. A lot of methods may be used to conduct risk analysis such as Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA), and Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA). In most of these methods, the obtained information may be used to build a risk model. Very often, the next step after risk analysis is, to study the behavior of the system if the undesirable events occur, in order to evaluate its performance in degraded conditions and its robustness or resilience. An approach allowing integrated risk analysis and simulation would be desirable. Such an approach has been proposed for business process management [Tjoa et al., 2011]. The goal of this paper is to present a meta model, suited to socio-technical systems, that allows describing the system to analyze, the result of the risk analysis and the required aspects of dynamical system behavior in order automatically perform simulation under degraded conditions. The model is an extension of the FIS model presented in [Negrichi et al., 2012]. The meta model may also be used for fault diagnosis as it can be used for generating redundancy relation and performing root cause search [Flaus et al., 2011]. Our meta model consists of three main modules: the structural view, the dysfunctional view and the view of the evolution.: • The structural view (SysFis): defines the architecture of the analyzed system, breaks it down into subsystems, and describes the characteristics of each subsystem and the material entities used. This is the basic view. that describes the structure of the installation or the analyzed object in a relatively simple manner, by showing the various interactions systems, and specifying, if necessary their functions and the material components (human, technical or informational) tha

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

Eco‐Holonic 4.0 Circular Business Model to Conceptualize Sustainable Value Chain Towards Digital Transition

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a circular business model based on an Eco-Holonic Architecture, through the integration of circular economy and holonic principles. A conceptual model is developed to manage the complexity of integrating circular economy principles, digital transformation, and tools and frameworks for sustainability into business models. The proposed architecture is multilevel and multiscale in order to achieve the instantiation of the sustainable value chain in any territory. The architecture promotes the incorporation of circular economy and holonic principles into new circular business models. This integrated perspective of business model can support the design and upgrade of the manufacturing companies in their respective industrial sectors. The conceptual model proposed is based on activity theory that considers the interactions between technical and social systems and allows the mitigation of the metabolic rift that exists between natural and social metabolism. This study contributes to the existing literature on circular economy, circular business models and activity theory by considering holonic paradigm concerns, which have not been explored yet. This research also offers a unique holonic architecture of circular business model by considering different levels, relationships, dynamism and contextualization (territory) aspects