Enterprise Architecture, an enabler of change and knowledge management

Organizations around the world require a sound process of change management to innovate and remain competitive over time. Change and knowledge management needs to be supported with the right tools to overcome the challenges of transformations and transitions in the business models and processes of diverse organizations. Steering boards can use enterprise architecture (EA) to implement new knowledge management initiatives in their strategic planning. EA allows companies to model the current situation (as-is models) of the organization and the desired future scenarios (to-be models) and to establish road maps to enable adequate transformations. Different frameworks exist in the market that support the management of organizations, for example: Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT), Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), quality models such as the one proposed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and systems such as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) are widely used for the management of business and information technologies (IT).  However, EA is not widely used with the other mentioned tools. This paper analyzes EA as a tool for change and knowledge management and compares its functionality with other frameworks in the market. The analysis performed in this paper checks if EA can be used and is compatible with other frameworks. To answer this question, an analysis of the most important processes, good practices, perspectives and tools provided by each framework was performed

A Holistic View of Data Warehousing in Education

Data warehousing (DW) is a widespread and essential practice in business organizations that support the data analytic and decision-making process. Despite the importance of DW in complex organizations, the adoption of a data warehouse (DWH) in education is apparently lower compared with other industries. To clarify this situation, this paper presents a systematic mapping that includes the study of empirical research papers from 2008 to 2018 on the topic of DW in education. For this paper, we applied a qualitative and quantitative approach based on a four-stage research method with the objective to have a holistic view of DWHs in education. After filtering and applying the proposed method, 34 relevant papers were identified and studied in detail. The study revealed interesting facts; for example, Kimball’s approach is the most applied methodology for DWH design in education. In addition, a mapping between this comprehensive collection of research papers covering educational DW and six dimensions of analysis (schema proposal, analysis of the user requirements, analysis of the business requirements, effectiveness, implementation, and data analysis) was performed. From this analysis, we discovered that the star schema is the most implemented approach. The purpose of the mapping was to explore and identify the priority areas of research and the research gaps within the academic community. These gaps are a source of opportunities to start new lines of research.This work was supported by Universidad Tecnológica Equinoccial

Moving the IT Infrastructure to the Cloud

Cloud computing services are nowadays advertised as an emerging business model. Moreover, these services bring innovative solutions in a more sophisticated competitive market. But, the decision for their adoption could be significantly reduced due to organizations’ concerns related to security, privacy, and trust. The challenge involves such questions as where to start, which provider should the company choose or whether it is even worthwhile. Thus, this paper proposes an improved unified framework, based on a previous study where a 6 step process framework was introduced. This improved framework add one new step for security and control after the migration process. At the end, a 7 processes framework is proposed aimed to fulfill organizations’ concerns when decide to adopt cloud computing services with a follow-up step. This additional step intends to help IT directors to make sure everything is working properly in a methodological way, in order to achieve a successful cloud computing migration process. An effective solution that is gaining momentum and popularity for competitive organizations

A Hybrid Infrastructure of Enterprise Architecture and Business Intelligence & Analytics for Knowledge Management in Education

Advances in science and technology, the Internet of Things, and the proliferation of mobile apps are critical factors to the current increase in the amount, structure, and size of information that organizations have to store, process, and analyze. Traditional data storages present technical deficiencies when handling huge volumes of data and are not adequate for process modeling and business intelligence; to cope with these deficiencies, new methods and technologies have been developed under the umbrella of big data. However, there is still the need in higher education institutions (HEIs) of a technological tool that can be used for big data processing and knowledge management (KM). To overcome this issue, it is essential to develop an information infrastructure that allows the capturing of knowledge and facilitates experimentation by having cleaned and consistent data. Thus, this paper presents a hybrid information infrastructure for business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) and KM based on an educational data warehouse (EDW) and an enterprise architecture (EA) repository that allows the digitization of knowledge and empowers the visualization and the analysis of dissimilar organizational components as people, processes, and technology. The proposed infrastructure was created based on research and will serve to run different experiments to analyze educational data and academic processes and for the creation of explicit knowledge using different algorithms and methods of educational data mining, learning analytics, online analytical processing (OLAP), and EA analytics

Moving the IT Infrastructure to the Cloud

Cloud computing services are nowadays advertised as an emerging business model. Moreover, these services bring innovative solutions in a more sophisticated competitive market. But, the decision for their adoption could be significantly reduced due to organizations’ concerns related to security, privacy, and trust. The challenge involves such questions as where to start, which provider should the company choose or whether it is even worthwhile. Thus, this paper proposes an improved unified framework, based on a previous study where a 6 step process framework was introduced. This improved framework add one new step for security and control after the migration process. At the end, a 7 processes framework is proposed aimed to fulfill organizations’ concerns when decide to adopt cloud computing services with a follow-up step. This additional step intends to help IT directors to make sure everything is working properly in a methodological way, in order to achieve a successful cloud computing migration process. An effective solution that is gaining momentum and popularity for competitive organizations