CC Corporate Intelligence (CC CI)

Enterprise architecture (EA) provides a powerful basis to transform an organization and to continually align the organization to external and internal demands. The process of transformation can effectively and efficiently supported by appropriate EA methods. There is however no one-size-fits-all method which is suitable to support all kinds of transformations in all kinds of organizations. Different project types and different context types require different methods or at least different configurations or adaptations of a method. Based on an exploratory empirical analysis, we classify three different EA scenarios in this article. The identified EA scenarios can provide the basis for situational EA method engineering.

We test a method for visualizing and measuring enterprise application architectures. The method was designed and previously used to reveal the hidden internal architectural structure of software applications. The focus of this paper is to test if it can also uncover new facts about the applications and their relationships in an enterprise architecture, i.e., if the method can reveal the hidden external structure between software applications. Our test uses data from a large international telecom company. In total, we analyzed 103 applications and 243 dependencies. Results show that the enterprise application structure can be classified as a core-periphery architecture with a propagation cost of 25%, core size of 34%, and architecture flow through of 64%. These findings suggest that the method could be effective in uncovering the hidden structure of an enterprise application architecture.

Information Systems (IS) are specified as complex socio-technical systems that display dynamic and emergent behaviors. Simulation-based studies provide a useful tool for analyzing such systems; however, the current presence and impact of simulation-based IS studies is limited. The socio-technical interactions and inherent dynamics of information systems make the development of IS simulations attractive, but challenging. Building simulations in this context requires both accurate conceptualizations of the underlying socio-technical systems as well as a sound transfer of these conceptualizations into simulation models. This study proposes an analysis framework that conjointly captures both the socio-technical system models as well as the derived simulation models. This allows for a critical assessment of the status quo of the extant simulation-based IS research. The identified relations are analyzed and seven propositions are derived, which provide guidance for prospective simulation-based research.

Service orientation is a broadly discussed design paradigm for information systems engineering. Only recently there have been several contributions to individual dimensions of service orientation like service definition, service modeling, service management or service governance. However, a combination of useful solutions for partial problems might not constitute an effective overall approach to service orientation. We argue that the establishment of service orientation is a wicked [design] problem, i.e. poorly formulated, confusing, and permeated with conflicting values of many decision makers or other stakeholders. Therefore this paper focuses on understanding the design problem of establishing service orientation in organizations in its design dimensions. The paper identifies four strategies for establishing service orientation and derives four propositions on the development paths which may connect these strategies.

Although companies introduced enterprise application integration (EAI) a couple of years ago, the complexity of corporate application landscapes is ever increasing. The current wave of technology being introduced into these application landscapes are service oriented architectures (SOA). Not unlike EAI before the introduction of these technologies is associated with re-use of software components and reaping cost cutting potentials. But when looking at the still increasing complexity of application landscapes following the introduction of SOA, the re-use and cost cutting arguments lead to disappointment. However, SOA offers a great potential to increase corporate agility. In order to gain and preserve corporate agility it is necessary to explicitly manage enterprise architecture. This paper discusses the problems of re-use and cost cutting expectations in SOA and contrasts them with the potentials related to make sustainable contributions to corporate agility. Structures, processes, and instruments to realize these potentials are discussed with reference to a literature review as well as to selected case studies.

Data management seems to experience a renaissance today. One particular trend in the so-called data economy has been the emergence of business models based on high-quality data. In this context, the paper examines the business partner data domain. Business partner data comprises unique identifiers, unambiguous names, or subsidiary information of business partners. The paper explores as to how and why business models of business partner data providers differ. Based on a study of six cases, the paper identifies three different business model patterns. A resource based view is used to explore the details of these patterns. Furthermore, the paper develops a set of propositions with regard to the establishment and evolution of certain business models. Furthermore, the paper discusses a market transformation from a traditional value chain toward a value network paradigm-a change which would seriously threaten the business models of established data providers such as Dun Bradstreet.

Enterprise models constitute a valuable basis for enterprise transformation because they usually represent a widely accepted image of an enterprise. Practitioners often put a lot of effort in the creation and maintenance of such models that therefore represent a significant investment. However, so far the information contained in enterprise models is to a large extend dateless which means it is hardly used to describe the transformation itself consistently. Therefore we propose a method to systematically derive an enterprise transformation model based on existing models representing enterprise structures at different points in time. The result of the method application is a set of project outlines derived from enterprise models. In order to generalize our approach to a multi-period transformation model capable of coping with dynamic changes and plan deviations we propose a respective conceptual system. Our research artefact (the method) is finally demonstrated in a case study.