Mats-Åke Hugoson

Interoperability Strategies for Business Agility

In times of increasing uncertainty and turbulence in the business environment, the concept of agility has become a new guiding principle for the change and development of enterprises. Agile business requires agile information systems and this have consequences on how the systems should interoperate. This paper describes and analyzes the impact of information systems interoperability strategies on business agility. Three interoperability strategies are identified; unification, intersection and interlinking. Cases from Swedish Health Care are used to demonstrate the application of the strategies. The conclusion is that the choice of interoperability strategy has significant impact on business agility and should therefore be analyzed and evaluated carefully. If the wrong strategy is chosen, there is a considerable risk for misalignment and expensive consequences. The challenge is to create architectural solutions for interoperability that are in harmony with the demands of the business, both in a short term and a long term perspective.

Enterprise Architecture Design Principles and Business-Driven IT Management

The strategic role of IT and its significance throughout the organization increases in environments characterized by complexity, variety and change. Hence IT management must deal with uncertainties and with different, conflicting and ever changing demands. In this sense Enterprise Architecture is playing an increasingly important role in improving IT management practice. This paper presents architectural design principles that strive to create and maintain alignment in a dynamic and uncertain business environment. Two crucial architectural aspects will be highlighted: (1) the delineation of the information systems, (2) the choice of interoperability principle. A case from Swedish Industry is used to demonstrate the application of the principles. In the paper we argue that the choice of principles has an significant impact on operational as well as strategic alignment. The larger, heterogeneous, and dynamic the business are, the more crucial are the issues of information systems delineation and interoperability.

Sustainable Alignment in Enterprise Architecture: A Case Study of Architectural Principles

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has emerged as the preeminent means to change and transform large organizations. By employing architectural principles, organizations strive to master the complexity inherent in business processes and information system and their alignment. Despite the fact that Business-IT alignment has been a top concern for practitioners and researchers for years, the emergent nature of alignment in EA has rarely been taken into consideration. Even if different approaches focus on business IT alignment, most of them have a tendency to focus on alignment as a state or a process by focusing on strategy or organizational issues. Moreover, very few existing EA Frameworks give clear guidance on how to design and manage these alignment issues. In this paper we argue that the choice of architectural principles has an impact on the ability to achieve and maintain sustainable EA alignment in a dynamic business context. A case study is used as a basis for the analysis.

The Total Picture – A Framework for Control of IT Investments

Evaluation of IT investments is a difficult and complicated issue. This chapter presents a framework for control of IT investments with the aim of providing decision-makers with a clear picture of individual IT investments as well as an aggregated level where all IT investments are combined into a total picture. The framework has been developed using an action–research approach.In a number of workshops intermediate results have been presented, and reactions from practitioners have influenced the development. Participants in the project come from different EU countries all directly concerned with IT investments. The framework, that is being tested by authorities in different EU countries, is considered by participants to have the potential to improve the decision-making processes. The framework can also potentially be used in academic teaching in IT economics. The framework is based on a lifetime perspective in which established investment models can be applied. A main dimension is to consider interrelations between different IT investments through aggregation into a total picture, in order to control total spending on IT in organisations.

Centralized versus Decentralized Information Systems

This paper brings into question whether information systems should be centralized or decentralized in order to provide greater support for different business processes. During the last century companies and organizations have used different approaches for centralization and decentralization; a simple answer to the question does not exist. This paper provides a survey of the evo- lution of centralized and decentralized approaches, mainly in a Nordic perspec- tive. Based on critical reflections on the situation in the end of the century we can discuss what we can learn from history to achieve alignment between cen- tralized and decentralized systems and the business structure. The conclusion is that theories, management and practice for decisions on centralization or decen- tralization of information systems must be improved. A conscious management and control of centralization /decentralization of IT support is a vital question in the company or the organization, and this is not a task that can be handled only by IT-specialists. There is a need for business oriented IT management of cen- tralization/decentralization.

Operational and Structural Business IT Alignment

In recent years, Enterprise Architecture has gradually emerged as the preeminent means to change and transform large organizations. By employing Architectural Principles, organizations strive to master the complexity inherent in business processes and IT system and their harmonious alignment. Unfortunately, very rarely has the coevolutionary and emergent nature of alignment been taken into consideration in IS research. Even if different approaches focus on business IT alignment, most of them have a tendency to focus on alignment as a state or an outcome. In this paper we argue that a dynamic approach is necessary in order to achieve business IT alignment in a long-term perspective. Furthermore we demonstrate that the choice of architectural principles has an impact on the ability to achieve and maintain operational as well as structural alignment. A case study is used as a basis for the analysis. The conclusion is that an Enterprise-centric architecture can create freedom of action for dynamic operational alignment, and that Business-oriented IT management can keep the IS Architecture aligned with the Business Architecture in a long term perspective.

Interaction between Heterogeneous Autonomous Systems : Principles and Practice

Today, many enterprises use information systems to support their activities but as a rule these systems are heterogeneous and incompatible. When enterprises need to cooperate with each other, they have to overcome this heterogeneity and establish interaction between their information systems. Based on a case study from international business development, this paper analyzes principles and conditions for creating interaction between autonomous systems. Furthermore, an approach to interaction between heterogeneous information systems in the case study is presented, which is based on a service-oriented architecture and Web services. In this context, a business process model describes how the distributed autonomous systems should be used by companies in different countries to support establishment of business relationships. These systems have different data models, and use different industrial classifications. Our main contribution to research in the field of interaction between autonomous systems are (1) a proposal for principles to be taken into account when federating autonomous systems and (2) an experience report when putting these principles into practice in the case study presented.