Modern IT-Infrastructure and IT-Managment in Small and Medium Enterprises

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) face the same challenges in their IT-departments as their bigger counterparts. In this article, we will take a quick look at existing best practices to deal with those challenges. In addition we will discuss a generic approach to introduce IT-Structure and IT-Management in an actual SMEs using these best practice methods

DECISION SUPPORT FOR SELECTING AN APPLICATION LANDSCAPE INTEGRATION STRATEGY IN MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) represent a powerful strategic instrument increasingly applied in today\u27s business environment. Besides juridical, financial, and organizational challenges, it is crucial to rapidly integrate the existing application landscapes in order to capitalize the aspired synergies. Literature documents four commonly agreed strategies: \u27best-of-breed\u27, \u27absorption\u27, \u27co-existence\u27, and \u27new-build\u27. However, no consolidated set of criteria exists to ease the selection of an integration strategy most suitable for the merger or the acquisition. Based on the results of a literature study, this paper proposes four integration profiles enabling a structured decision support for selecting the appropriate application landscape strategy during M&A. Each profile comprises relevant driving factors and resulting consequences as selection criteria. The identified literature statements regarding the criteria are validated by means of 12 confirmatory interviews with M&A experts. Furthermore, collected findings from an additional exploratory interview part with the practitioners complement the devised strategy profiles

IT-Architektur als Maß für die IT-Agilität

Die Veränderung von Märkten, der Wandel von Geschäftsmodellen und die Weiterentwicklung von Technologien führen dazu, dass sich Informationssysteme in zunehmendem Maße ebenfalls verändern müssen. IT-Agilität beschreibt die Fähigkeit von Informationssystemen sich schnell an zunehmendveränderte fachliche Anforderungen anzupassen, die zu kritischen Faktoren für den Unternehmenserfolg werden (vgl. [4]). Dieser Beitrag fokussiert auf die IT-Architektur als einen zentralenEnabler für IT-Agilität. Um die IT-Agilität managen und verbessern zu können, muss diese messbar gemacht werden. Hierzu wird ein Kennzahlensystem zur Bestimmung der IT-Agilität, auf Basis von Eigenschaften der IT-Architektur eines Unternehmens, vorgeschlagen. Eine Fallstudie aus der Praxis belegt die Anwendbarkeit dieses Kennzahlensystems

Enterprise Architecture Documentation: Current Practices and Future Directions

Over the past decade Enterprise Architecture (EA) management matured to a discipline commonly perceived as a strategic advantage. Among others, EA management helps to identify and realize cost saving potentials in organizations. EA initiatives commonly start by documenting the status-quo of the EA. The respective management discipline analyzes this so-called current state and derives intermediate planned states heading towards a desired target state of the architecture. Several EA frameworks describe this process in theory. However, during practical application, organizations struggle with documenting the EA and lack concrete guidance during the process. To underline our observations and confirm our hypotheses, we conducted a survey among 140 EA practitioners to analyze issues organizations face while documenting the EA and keeping the documentation up to date. In this paper we present results on current practices, challenges, and automation techniques for EA documentation in a descriptive manner

Framework and Reference for Architecture Design

The paper outlines the design of enterprise architectures. The architecture design is based on a comprehensive architecture framework which classifies the basic domains of enterprise architecture and lays the ground for architecture description. The description of enterprise architecture is based on three basic views. The component view describes the elements of architecture and their relationships. The communication view shows how the elements interact with one another. The distribution view describes how the elements are distributed in terms of location or organisational assignment. Key element of architecture design is to account for interdependencies among the building blocks of architecture. Blueprints are introduced as a means in planning the deployment of architecture on a large scale. Blueprints give a comprehensive view on the building blocks and how the interact. They show the effects of architecture design between business, application, and infrastructure architecture. The main stakeholders and their respective usage of the design techniques are explained

Enterprise Architecture Planning: Analyses of Requirements from Practice and Research

Enterprise architecture management (EAM) has become an increasingly important topic in practice due to the growing complexity of organizations and their underlying IT. While there is a strong interest in Enterprise Architecture (EA) modeling, evaluation, and frameworks, a lack of knowledge remains in the research field of EA planning. We conducted a series of expert interviews on the topic of EA planning. From these interviews we were able to extract requirements for EA planning from practice as the foundation of our analyses. Additionally, we conducted a structured literature review to elicit requirements for EA planning from a research perspective. This paper combines the results of both the practitioner interviews and the literature review to emphasize the gaps between the two worlds. As a result, we identified that current research does not adequately address the pressing problems of EA planning in practice

An Exploration of Enterprise Architecture Research

Management of the enterprise architecture has become increasingly recognized as a crucial part of both business and IT management. Still, a common understanding and methodological consistency seems far from being developed. Acknowledging the significant role of research in moving the development process along, this article employs different bibliometric methods, complemented by an extensive qualitative interpretation of the research field, to provide a unique overview of the enterprise architecture literature. After answering our research questions about the collaboration via co-authorships, the intellectual structure of the research field and its most influential works, and the principal themes of research, we propose an agenda for future research based on the findings from the above analyses and their comparison to empirical insights from the literature. In particular, our study finds a considerable degree of co-authorship clustering and a positive impact of the extent of co-authorship on the diffusion of works on enterprise architecture. In addition, this article identifies three major research streams and shows that research to date has revolved around specific themes, while some of high practical relevance receive minor attention. Hence, the contribution of our study is manifold and offers support for researchers and practitioners alike