The Use of GERAM for Design of a Virtual Enterprise for a Ship Maintenance Consortium

This chapter describes the key elements in the application of GERAM to the analysis of the virtual enterprise of a ship maintenance consortium, the ANZAC ship alliance. The ANZAC ship project built 10 ANZAC class guided missile frigates for the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy. The ships have a service life of 25 to 30 years in which changes are required to keep up-to-date with latest warfare. In this study, VERA was adopted as the generic enterprise reference architecture to guide the systematic study of the anatomy of the virtual enterprise. The issues of creating and managing the logistics and information infrastructure that are necessary to support successful operation of the virtual enterprise are examined. Particular models were created according to GERAM for the timely support of the projects as the virtual enterprise grew.

Enterprise Architecture by a Small Unit in a Federated Organization

This chapter provides specific guidance for enterprise architects who are part of a small team in a federated organization. Architects in that situation may be compelled to drastically limit the scope of their program. This chapter offers architects several actions they can take to perform current architecture, target architecture, and architecture governance as part of a wider-scoped program. Emphasis is placed on using an architecture repository tool, focusing on open standards, planning for shared business services, supporting a governance process, and building trust relationships within and between the organization’s departments.

Federated Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems consist of many software components, which provide specific functionality. As ERP systems become more complex, the financial expenditures that are associated with the application of such systems dramatically increase. Furthermore, ERP system development of nowadays is product-oriented and coordinated by only one instance at any one time. Consequently, each product has a separate data model, which is the basis for the integration of various types of business applications. Based on this fact, the selection of the covered functional enterprise sectors as well as the implemented functions is controlled by the respective vendor, too. Thus, enhancements and modifications of the standard software product are incumbent upon the software vendors. A cross-vendor standardization of data models for ERP systems and the establishment of unified architectural model, however, would change this situation. The new idea is to develop a novel ERP system architecture, which facilitates an overall reusability of individual business components (BC) through a shared and non-monolithic architecture based on Web services. The presented approach uses Web services to wrap up ERP components that are provided within a distributed system, which appears as an ERP community and serves as a vendor-independent platform.

Managing Enterprise Architecture Change

Enterprise architecture (EA) is the recognised place where the engineering practice of systems architecture meets real-world enterprise needs. The enterprise computer-based systems employed by organisations today can be extremely complex. These systems are essential for undertaking business and general operations in the modern environment, and yet the ability of organisations to control their evolution is questionable. The emerging practice of enterprise architecture seeks to control that complexity through the use of a holistic and top-down perspective. However, the methodologies and toolsets already in use are very much bottom-up by nature. An architecture-based approach is herein proposed; one that has at its base a complete and formal architectural description (or model). This allows enterprise architects, strategists, and designers to confidently model, predict, and control the emergent properties of their respective systems from an architectural point of view. The authors conclude that by using an approach founded upon an architectural model to analyse software and enterprise systems, architects can guide the design and evolution of architectures based on quantifiable nonfunctional requirements. Furthermore, hierarchical 3D visualisation provides a meaningful and intuitive means for conceiving and communicating complex architectures.

Improving Stakeholder Communications and IT Engagement

Stakeholder engagement is critical to applying enterprise architecture (EA) principles and methodologies in order to achieve value from information technology (IT) investments. Stakeholders include the business owners, data owners, developers, and technical infrastructure operational staff. Obtaining stakeholder engagement is a continuous process and is necessary at all levels of the organization. It is also an integral aspect of the governance process for IT investments. This chapter addresses the following topics as they relate to stakeholder engagement:• Obtaining high-level stakeholder involvement in EA governing processes and addressing major challenges in building stakeholder engagement.• Illustrating how stakeholder involvement can lead to consolidation and better management of IT investments.• Identifying vehicles to communicate with EA stakeholders while ensuring the architecture accommodates the style and priorities of the stakeholder community.

Activity-Based Methodology for Development and Analysis of Integrated DoD Architectures

This chapter describes the activity-based methodology (ABM), an efficient and effective approach to-ward development and analysis of DoD integrated architectures that will enable them to align with and fully support decision-making processes and mission outcomes. ABM consists of a tool-independent disciplined approach to developing fully integrated, unambiguous, and consistent DODAF Operational, System, and Technical views in supporting both “as-is” architectures (where all current elements are known) and “to-be” architectures (where not all future elements are known). ABM enables architects to concentrate on the Art and Science of architectures—that is identifying core architecture elements, their views, how they are related together, and the resulting analysis used for decision-making purposes. ABM delivers significant architecture development productivity and quality gains by generating several DoDAF products and their elements from the core architecture elements. ABM facilitates the transition from integrated “static” architectures to executable “dynamic” process models for time-dependent assessments of complex operations and resource usage. Workflow steps for creating integrated architecture are detailed. Numerous architecture analysis strategies are presented that show the value of integrated architectures to decision makers and mission outcomes.

Extreme Architecture Framework

As consultant-educators, the authors created the extreme architecture framework (XAF) in order to quickly grasp an understanding of an organisation’s architecture from different perspectives. The framework is presented as a matrix of system types and architectural perspectives that is described by a single uncluttered diagram. Elements within the framework are defined along with the content that can include architectural representations, planning, and governance information. A discussion follows to show the relationship of the framework to planning, development, and governance activities. The minimalist framework presents a consolidated view of both human activity and software systems and can also help to foster a shared understanding between IT groups and business areas. It has been designed to answer a manager’s questions: • Which elements of the enterprise do I need to be aware of and understand; and • Which elements am I responsible for and need to manage?

A Fundamental SOA Approach to Rebuilding Enterprise Architecture for a Local Government after a Disaster

As a result of Hurricane Katrina, the destruction of property, assets, documentation, and human life in the Gulf Port has introduced a myriad of challenging issues. These issues involve human, social, government, and technological concerns. This chapter does not address the many immediate human and social concerns brought forth from a natural disaster or major terrorist attack (NDMTA); this chapter addresses a small but significant problem of reestablishing or laying the groundwork for an enterprise architecture for local government during the response phase of the disaster. Specifically, it addresses constructing a high-level data model and fundamental SOA, utilizing the remaining local assets, XML (extensible markup language), and Web services.

The Syngenta Architecture Story

We share the experiences of an enterprise architecture (EA) practice within a young global company, Syngenta. We will see how EA within the company has evolved and matured. We will reveal our general architecture experiences, plus insights gleaned from case studies in widely differing business areas. EA nowadays aspires to cover all aspects of the enterprise—particularly business process and information. A theme that we emphasize is that architects can no longer dictate to the organization by reason of analytical/technical superiority, but need the skills to affect strategic decisions and directions by influencing. This leads to the conclusion that effective EA is as much a social activity as a technical one, where personal skills are clearly as important as analytical. In addition, we have found that considering architecture challenges through the lens of business efficiency, growth, and innovation provides a framework for a deeper understanding of the issues, constraints, inevitable trade-offs, and potential architecture solutions to particular business problems.

A Network-Based View of Enterprise Architecture

Traditional notions of architecture have focused on the components and (or domains of interest—process, data, and infrastructure) aspects of architecture. Their goal is to separate concerns into modules and provide interfaces between modules. This view helps designers understand the ideal or espoused view of architecture. In our work, we view architecture from a dependency perspective. These dependencies evolve over time, creating an emergent architecture. The emergence is influenced by both technical and social factors. Dependencies occur during the design, production, and use of enterprise components. This leads us to use network-based analysis techniques in order to understand the emerging dependency networks. In order to provide architects with support tools to communicate and make decisions about architecture, we describe the data requirements and algorithms that can be used to build a decision support system that enable enterprises to incorporate a network perspective in their decision making process. We present our approach and methods in the context of a case study