the infrastructure of enterprise or companies. ([6], [7], [8]). Meanwhile, ... people purposed actions in EIS development and implementation. ... With rapid renewal in software and hardware ..... Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Washington, DC ...
Features of Enterprise Information Systems Integration: A Systemic Analysis Song Wang
Kanliang Wang
Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, China
Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, USA
Li Xu and Ling Li
Jung Choi
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA
Ferris State University, Big Rapids, Michigan 49037, USA
Abstract—this paper strives to review the contribution of systems theory to enterprise architecture and integration, make a summary of methods or tools at systems level and probe into some crucial concepts and thinking of systems theory applied in the enterprise integration activities. As the summary to this paper, some new prospects in enterprise architecture and integration are presented to tackle the increasing complexity and new requirements on modern enterprises.
(EI) will renovate the fashions via which they look on enterprise information systems. Although a lot of research on EIS (and EA or EI) from the end of last century has provided instructive theoretical results and empirical findings, the impact of systems theory or systemic thinking has not been well investigated in these literatures. This paper will review the contribution of systems theory to EA, EI and present an outline of how systems theorists or systems developers consider the enterprise information systems to be.
Keywords: systems theory; systems thinking; enterprise information systems;, enterprise architecture; enterprise integration;
I.
II. EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS From the historical viewpoints ([2], [3], [4], [1]), Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) have spanned almost half century to become the infrastructure of enterprise or companies ([6], [7], [8]).
INTRODUCTION
Information and communication technology (ICT) has already become the pillar of enterprises to tackle huge data and information to meet rigid demand from timelimited customers’ service. During the elapsed 60 years, computers and networks were applied in different industries and commercial organizations; this trend now is accelerated by endless information technology updating and big changes throughout regional or global market.
Meanwhile, Material Requirement Planning (MRP), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII) and Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) have been developed and widely implemented to control productionplanning activities in modern manufacturing enterprises. Furthermore, facing intensive global competition, enterprises are compelled to unify their work together to achieve the expected goals in terms of minimizing delays and costs such as inventory costs, production costs and transportation or delivery costs. In addition, new forms of organizations have emerged, such as the extended enterprises or virtual enterprises ([9], [10], [11], [12]).
Enterprise information systems (EIS), not only from theoretical but from practical viewpoint, have confronted some crucial challenges when the operation fashions of enterprises have stepped into new environment. A more generic systemic thinking of EIS design, planning and deployment should be logically considered. Especially, in the interdisciplinary research of information systems, systems theory has been applied or potentially as the background to support the information systems research [5]. In addition the systems theory and its feasible applications in enterprises systems integration are in huge demand [1], thus theorists and practitioners in enterprise architecture (EA) and enterprise integration
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Today’s business enterprises can be viewed as a network of multiple heterogeneous information sources over which various complex business procedures are executed. The information systems were traditionally built to automate existing data-intensive business functions, such as billing, that are otherwise performed manually in separate organizational entities. By automating these
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functions separately, an enterprise typically ends up with many stand-alone systems between which related information may be distributed and not shared, so to eliminate the so-called “Islands” in global competition context is in great demand.
set of manageable phases and steps to build and shape new IT systems. Each phase requires different types of specialists or expert knowledge. The conventional systems approach has been regarded as a core theory in ISD field.
In fact, current research and practice in enterprise information systems do not provide business modellers or system architects a more formal system theoretical perspective from which business processes can be analyzed in an open, continuous and overall manner. This gap is serious; therefore, systemic analysis is essential for learning the effect of changes in enterprise architecture, enterprise process logic and parameters on business performance measures to making better decisions.
With rapid renewal in software and hardware, a distributed and network approach has evolved and became the new school of ISD. This view has shown the great efforts to extend the conventional ISD work to more open and agile methodologies. Moreover, human-centric processes (e.g., Customer Relationship Management, CRM) or specifications outside of enterprise boundary (e.g., Supply Chain Management, SCM) will heavily influence ISD. Thus, this multiperspectives view will become a generic approach within which systemic and network thinking should be the basis. Hereby, the socalled multi-perspectives approach can be seen as the new extension of conventional systems development under complexity.
III. SYSTEMS THEORY AND SYSTEMS THINKING IN ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS A. System theory as a background to support enterprise information systems System thinking provides an important insight into the role of information systems plays in the process from data to knowledge. Information systems are not created for their own sake. They serve or support users engaged in what for them is meaningful action. Now, when one system is thought of as serving another, it is a fundamental principle of systems thinking that should be thought carefully about, it is primary to define carefully the nature of the system served ([13], [14]).
IV. SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVES ON ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE Enterprise Architecture (EA) as a framework and its design methodology are widely exercised across many fields, and some instructive lessons have achieved. However, EA has not a popularly accepted definition [15]. By definition, Enterprise Architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model [16].
Information System is a comprehensive concept which is far more substantial than the original phrase “data processing system”, which adequately expressed the nature of computing only in the days of transaction processing. Indeed, an “enterprise information system” is a “knowledge attribution system” in which people select certain data, get them processed and make them meaningful in enterprise context alike to support people engaged in purposeful action. Therefore, one crucial factor of successful EIS is to govern people purposed actions in EIS development and implementation.
A. Synthesis System theories focus problems on the relationship between parts and the whole. For a corporation or an organization, departments and business units or service providers are the parts and itself is the whole ([4], [1], [17], [18], [19]). For a supply chain or virtual enterprise, all the companies or collaboration units embedded in are the parts, while the whole enterprise is a whole. Every system is composed of separate parts, but the function of a system can not simply achieved by the sum of functions provided by each part or subsystems.
B. Approach Shift in Enterprise information System Development
Consequently, the whole enterprise system can accomplish certain function while the parts of it cannot, which is called the whole affectivity in enterprise systems. From systems theory, synthesis of EIS with enterprise scope has two fundamental facets:
The traditional systems development approaches such as bottom-up, structural design and analysis had a great impact on the construction methodologies of Information Systems Development (ISD). Certainly, it is believed that ISD should be accomplished in a systematic manner trying to accomplish various tasks in a natural and logical order. Consequently, the ISD work is partitioned in a
z It means synthesis inside the enterprise itself. The scale of synthesis covers
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businesses between each department, the restrictions between each resource, and so on. All of these need some tools to cooperate and unite.
(1) Functional view is used to describe functional specifications (e.g. user behaviour and application requirements), thus form this view; system architecture refers to the architectural model adopted. In the case of EIS, multi-tiered client-server models are described. Services provided by each application tier (called modules) are also defined.
z It also means the internal and external synthesis of enterprise in supply chain or global marketplace, such as the synthesis among users’ requirements, supplies, purchases and transactions.
(2) Topology view facilitates the definition of system access points and the resource allocation and replication. The term site is used to characterize any location (i.e. a building, an office, etc.). As such, a site is a composite entity which can be further analyzed into sub-sites, forming thus a hierarchical structure. Functional and topology views are related. Resources (e.g. processes and files) correspond to services and data described through functional view and are located into sites.
B. Mapping and abstraction Traceability is challenging in many respects of EA development, regardless of its lifecycle phase. The challenge of mapping the objectives to specific architectural elements is unmanageable. A Domain - Mapping thinking can be utilized to guide the Enterprise Architecture efforts ranging from analysis, designing even evaluation of EA and EI. C. Hierarchy and granulitization Under the hierarchical perspective, enterprise architecture can accommodate the inter-organizational processes, integrate independent ERP via some messaging approach to achieve higher performance without discard the legacy systems. And the hierarchical layer provides basic but distinct modeling mindset not only helpful on developing enterprise information system but on evaluating performance of EA ([20], [21], [14], [22], [23], [24], [25]).
(3) Physical view refers to the aggregate network (hardware instruments or interfaces). Network nodes are either workstations allocated to users or server stations running server processes. Topology and Physical views are interrelated. Both are decomposed to the same hierarchical levels of detail.
With systemic perspective, granulitization means to exact notable characters via screening the features of lower levels, thus to form a new interpretation or vision of the system. Granulitization is much closed to the Hierarchy. Refer to enterprise systems, different levels have their own definitions, constraints and behaviors, but only those relevant with whole enterprise system and holistic goals can be adopted into the final architecture. The granulitization approach has already become the implicit designing method or analysis guideline ([26], [20]). With respect to the idea of EA is it can be used to guide design decisions and limits the solution space by setting constraints, granulitization plays the fundamental role in the creation of architectural principles and constraints imposed upon the organization, and/or the decisions taken in support of realizing the business strategies.
Thacker [27] defines integration as ‘the information required by each activity available on a timely basis, accurately, in the format required, and without asking’. Petrie’ implicitly assumes a broader concept of integration in the following definition: ‘EI is the task of improving the performance of large complex processes ([28], [29], [30]).
V. ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION AND THE APPLICATION OF SYSTEMS THEORY
A. Integration modes Enterprise information systems can be viewed as the federal aggregation of multiple components such as applications, services or modules. Three basic integration modes can be acquired (see Figure 1). (a) peer-to-peer integration, P-to-P communication and interfaces directly between individual IT applications, (b) broker-based integration, broker acts as an integration hub with middleware between IT applications and broker enables real-time processing, (c) business-process integration, extends brokerbased integration with knowledge of business process. Business process model captures workflow between IT applications and humans.
D. Framework and modeling Framework provides methodological support to modeling activities within enterprise architecture. Some systemic views of framework are conducive:
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the 7-layer OSI model). Integration can be achieved by unification (the possible standards are methods, architectures, constructs and reusable partial models) or by federation (the possible standards are interfaces, reference models or ontology).
ERP 1
SCM
ERP 2
C. Diagram and mechanism i)
KMS
Based on the synergic theory, the aggregation framework of enterprise information systems should be able to emerge with the holistic functionality beyond the subsystems. Thus a systemic approach for analysts or developers is to build the enterprise integration platform (EIP). The inner synergy is needed to build EIP to aggregate the information from different resources, keep the seamless linkage between varied processes and applications in lower levels, and facilitate the complex services in higher levels. The final appearance of EIP is the modules.
(a) Peer-to-Peer Integration ERP 1
SCM
Brokers
ERP 2
KMS
Interoperability can be defined broader as the ability of information systems and the business processes they support, to exchange data and enable sharing of information ([32], [30], [33], [34], [35]).
(b) Brokers Integration
ERP 1
SCM
Process
Brokers
Synergy and interoperability
From systems perspective, technical interoperability plays elementary role in integration. It requires functional or technical compatibility among protocols or interfaces of primary specifications on data and applications. Interoperability can be easily realized if stakeholders operate similar functions.
ERP 2
KMS
Semantic interoperability deals with the "what" of integration and that is different with technical interoperability focusing on syntax of "how" to do integration. The IEC standard [50] confirmed the concept of interoperability in the settings of software engineering as a level of compatibility.
(c)Business Process Broker Figure 1. Three basic integration modes
B. Fashions and platform selection
ii) Heterogeneity and connectivity
CEN TC310 WG1 has recognized three levels of integration:
To provide a unified and consistent vision of these data entities in operation, and provide information connectivity across multiple platforms ([36], [37]) three types of applications to be addressed by integration, which provides a systemic analysis on the application to be considered in platform selection:
(1) Physical Integration (interconnection of devices, NC machines, etc via computer networks); (2) Application Integration (dealing with interoperability of software applications and database systems in heterogeneous computing environments); and
(1) Homogeneous with one instance: One process is supported by one application and one data base. This model avoids the problems emerging from redundant data storage and asynchronous data exchange between separated applications.
(3) Business Integration (coordination of functions that manage, control and monitor business processes). Chen and Vernadat [31] consider that integration can be formed of (1) data (data modelling), (2) organization (modelling of systems and processes) and (3) communication (modelling of computer networks, for example
(2) Homogeneous with several instances: Several identical processes in different business units are supported by several
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identical applications that run on different computers and rely on logically separated data bases.
(2) Applications logic dimension, offering the ability to manage the interactions between an application system and its various presentation interfaces, such as web browsers, mobile computing devices, clients and terminals.
(3) Heterogeneous: Several different processes in different business units are supported by several different applications. An additional problem compared to the integration in a homogeneous environment is, that the concerned applications are built upon divergent data models, which means that they provide different semantics of the data to be exchanged.
(3) Data logic, providing the capability to access and map data into a form (or data structure) that can be managed by business logic. VI. CONCLUSIONS The grand research challenge in EA and EI is to conquer systems complexity [48]. To meet this challenge, a reformation is required throughout all levels of enterprise, ranging from design mindset to implementation activities in practice.
As for the connectivity, from the reusability perspective in software applications, middleware as a “glue” programming appeared which serves to connect or mediate between two separate and already existing programs ([38], [39], [40]). Companies or organizations are now developing enterprise-wide information systems generally by integrating previously independent applications, which are legacy applications.
The systems theory and systems thinking as primary theoretical basis can provide a multidimensional and hierarchical vision and methodology for the EA and EI, which are the major efforts of this paper. It demonstrated that systems theory can provide concrete support to EA and EI activities. Building better enterprise systems requires putting the enterprise back into enterprise systems [49] that means not only analysts, developers but researchers should adopt and adapt to a systemic viewpoint to deploy their actions. As presented in this paper, systems theory has evoked the awareness of importance in EA and EI.
iii) Scalability Scalability is a common requirement for all ERP systems. An enterprise information system must be able to facilitate the strategic development of a company for many years to undergo. Scalability is reflected in the need for the system to accommodate expanded management functions. A scalable system is essential for a construction enterprise to meet rapidly expandable requirements and in the mean time to be flexible for economic down turns ([41], [42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47]).
When stepping into the second decade of 21st Century, the growing popularity of eCommerce, internet technology and the insistent demand of globalization increase the demand for collaborative and extended enterprise applications. Hence an enterprise architecture which can span across the entire value chain to provide value-added services is in great necessity; additionally a robust but adaptive enterprise system with cogent agility will be welcomed in the future. As for the conventional systems architecture, some innovations to exploit the legacy systems and reduce the cost of integration are in great demand. All above requirements in novel EA and EI development call for further application of systems theory in enterprise information system, hence systems theory will provide more powerful bolster to these exploration.
iv) Agility A systemic thinking to enhance the whole agility of EIS is to ascribe the proactivity, reactivity and leaning ability to its basic and elementary components. With the software architecture stepping into SOA, and the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID), events processing can be embedded in enterprise information systems to facilitate event aggregation into high level actionable information, thus improve the total responsiveness of EIS. D. Dimension and technical issues Dimensions of the integration standards and specifications is the crucial problem in EI, basically it can be identified along the lines of three orthogonal dimensions:
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work is partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under the grant #70890080/70890081; #70971107.
(1) Business logic dimension, implementing the business rules that regulate the business processes of an application system.
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