Distributed Ledger Technology in the Financial Industry: Managerial, Organizational, and Technological Challenges

Although the potential of distributed ledger technology (DLT) is generally acknowledged, there is still little evidence of effective widespread use in the financial industry. Coming from this observation, this study aims at analyzing the key challenges of DLT in banking and insurance not only from a technical but also from a managerial and organizational perspective addressing people- and process-related issues. For this purpose, twelve German and Swiss industry experts are interviewed. The resulting eight hours of interviews or around 120 transcribed pages are deductively and inductively categorized as well as qualitatively analyzed. The findings of the interview indicate that there are significant managerial and, in particular, organizational challenges that outweigh the technical barriers and impede the progress of DLT in the financial industry. In conclusion, the insights of this study show the importance of non-technical issues concerning DLT and guide future research in this direction

The Enterprise Architecture Analysis Tool – Support for the Predictive, Probabilistic Architecture Modeling Framework

The business of contemporary organizations is heavily dependent on information systems. Business processes and IT are interwoven and numerous technologies are in use. How the involved systems affect each other or impact the organizations’ business domain is often uncertain, thus decision-making regarding information technology is challenging. Enterprise architecture (EA) is a holistic, model-based management approach. Many of the available EA software tools focus on documenting and have limited analysis capabilities. In this article, a tool for EA analysis is presented, supporting the analysis of properties such as business fit, security, and interoperability. The tool is implemented to support the Predictive, Probabilistic Architecture Modeling Framework to specify and apply assessment frameworks for performing property analysis on EA models

Automating Enterprise Architecture Documentation using an Enterprise Service Bus

Currently the documentation of Enterprise Architectures (EA) requires manual collection of data resulting in an error prone, expensive, and time consuming process. Recent approaches seek to automate and improve EA documentation by employing the productive system environment of organizations. In this paper, we investigate a specific Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) considered as the nervous system of an enterprise interconnecting business applications and processes as an information source. We evaluate the degree of coverage to which data of a productive system can be used for EA documentation. A vendor-specific ESB data model is reverse-engineered and transformation rules for three representative EA information models are derived. These transformation rules are employed to perform automated model transformations making the first step towards an automated EA documentation. We evaluate our approach using a productive ESB system from a leading enterprise of the fashion industry

Tool Support for Enterprise Architecture Analysis : with application in cyber security

In today’s companies, business processes and information technology areinterwoven. Old and new systems as well as off-the-shelf products and tailoredsolutions are used. This results in heterogeneous, often complex ITlandscapes. The impact of changes and the affected systems are difficult toidentify. However, volatile business environments and changing customer requestsrequire organizations to adapt quickly and to frequently make decisionsabout the modifications of their information technology. IT management aims at generating value from the usage of informationtechnology. One frequently used IT management approach is Enterprise Architecture.Company-wide models are used to obtain a holistic picture. Thesemodels are usually created using Enterprise Architecture modeling tools.These tools frequently have strong documentation capabilities. However, theyoften lack advanced analysis functionality. Specifically, such tools do not offersufficient support for the analysis of system properties, such as cyber security,availability or interoperability. The ability to analyze a set of possible scenariosand predict the properties of the modeled systems would be valuablefor decision-making. Changes or extensions could be evaluated before theirimplementation. In other domains, for example, in architecture in its classicalmeaning or in the development of machines, the analysis of models is a commonpractice. Typically, CAD tools are used to perform analysis and supportdecision-making. It is thereby possible to investigate the stability of buildingsor the performance of engines without the need for empirical testing. The contribution of the research work documented in this thesis is a softwaretool with a particular focus on the analysis of Enterprise Architecturemodels and thereby support for decision-making. This tool combines stateof-the-art Enterprise Architecture tooling with advanced analysis capabilitiesthat, until now, were only offered by modeling tools for other domains. Thepresented tool possesses two components. One component allows the creationof a metamodel capturing Enterprise Architecture analysis theory, for example,relevant concepts in the context of cyber security and how they relateto each other. The other component supports the instantiation of the metamodelinto an Enterprise Architecture model. Once a model is in place, itcan be analyzed with regards to the previously specified theory so that, forinstance, a cyber security evaluation can be conducted. The analysis tool was partly developed within the context of a larger researchproject on cyber security analysis. However, the tool is not restrictedto applications within this field. It can be used for the evaluation of numeroussystem properties. Several authors contributed to the tool both on an implementationlevel and in the development and design of the tool’s features. Theperformed research followed the Design Science methodology. First, the objectivesof a tool for Enterprise Architecture analysis were defined. Next, anartifact was designed and developed in terms of a software tool. This tool wasthen demonstrated and evaluated against the objectives. Lastly, the resultswere communicated to both academic and non-academic audiences.QC 20140523</p

Enterprise architecture managements impact on information technology success

Both practitioners and researchers put forward enterprise architecture management as a mean for achieving success with information technology. Many arguments have been put forward to support the benefits claimed to arise from mature enterprise architecture management and a considerable amount of literature describes the components of mature (successful) enterprise architecture management. However, few studies have empirically tested whether the enterprise architecture management activities impact organizations' success with information technology. This paper tests the relationship between organizations' success with information technology and enterprise architecture management activities. Significant correlations are found between these variables.© 2011 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.QC 2012030

An Extended ArchiMate Metamodel for Microgrid Control System Architectures

Management of various Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) in microgrids requires the integration of heterogeneous control devices and systems. Design and management of such integrated systems would benefit from the application of models that capture structural and functional aspects. These models are important in order to abstract the technical detail for planning and design in order to provide a basis for discussion amongst stakeholders and technical experts. Such models should provide semantics that adequately describe and define these aspects from the electro-technical to the information management perspective during design and implementation. In the discipline of IT management, Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a commonly used approach. The EA approach is typically based on metamodels with ArchiMate being one of the most well known. ArchiMate aims to enable holistic descriptions of businesses and their supporting IT using three layers, namely business, application and technology, from three perspectives, namely information, behavior and structure. While, invaluable for planning and management of large organizational IT, ArchiMate in its original form lacks the descriptive semantics required to specifically capture the high level of systems integration required for electrical process management. This paper proposes an extended ArchiMate metamodel for modeling microgrid components, the control systems, and the management and control of these integrated systems. The paper provides an example of how this can be applied to a proposed microgrid development project.QC 20130531</p