Towards an Integrated Model for Enterprise Interoperability
Wided Gu
´
edria
SSI, CRP Henri Tudor, 29 JFK, Luxembourg-Kircheberg, Luxembourg
wided.guedria@tudor.lu
Keywords:
Enterprise Interoperability, Interoperability Maturity, Framework, Integrated Model.
Abstract:
One of the challenges faced by a network of enterprises is the development of interoperability between its
members. Transformations in this context are usually driven by Enterprise Interoperability (EI) problems that
may be faced. In order to quickly overcome these problems, enterprises need characterizing and assessing
interoperability to be prepared to establish means for collaboration. Maturity models have been developed
in response to this challenge. In this paper, we propose to define an integrated model based on a maturity
model and an ontological formalization of the enterprise interoperability domain. This will allow diagnosing
interoperability problems when assessing interoperability. The integrated model could be used improve the
capability of an enterprise to interoperate based on a shared understanding of interoperability.
1 INTRODUCTION
As information systems and technologies grow in
complexity and scope, the need for a coherent
and comprehensive modeling approach becomes of
paramount importance. The enterprise architecture
deals with these issues in a coherent and integral fash-
ion while at the same time a medium to achieve a
shared understanding and conceptualization among
all stakeholders involved and govern enterprise de-
velopment based on this conceptualization (Proper,
2008). The intent of an enterprise architecture is to
determine how an organization can most effectively
achieve its current and future objectives. Among
these objectives, we focus on improving the capability
of the enterprise to interoperate with future partners.
The complexity of an organization can be huge
due to many processes, departments and information
systems involved. To provide architects with some
structure, architecture frameworks have been intro-
duced. These frameworks intend to aid architects by
providing a meta-model (e.g. an ontology) which uses
different abstraction levels to map all kinds of infor-
mation needed. As part of EA, some of the models
should be dedicated to interoperability, as an impor-
tant issue that have to be taken into account to reach
the business objectives. To our knowledge, none of
the existing Enterprise Interoperability (EI) frame-
works proposes a shared understanding and concep-
tualization of interoperability while improving the ca-
pability of an enterprise to interoperate.
In this paper, we propose to define an integrated
framework that defines and improves the enterprise
interoperability. The paper is structured as follows:
section 2 defines the research ontext and reviews some
of the related work. Based on that, section 3 defines
and describes the integrated framework. Section 4
gives an example to use the proposed model. Con-
clusion and future work are outlined in section 5.
2 RELATED WORK
In the current globalised and networked society, en-
terprises need to collaborate with other enterprises to
meet their own added values and to exploit the market
opportunities. A major issue in global collaboration
and cooperation is the development of interoperabil-
ity. Many definitions of interoperability have been
proposed in the literature. A review of them can be
found in (Gu
´
edria, 2012). The most known definition
is the one proposed by the IEEE, considering inter-
operability as the ability of two or more systems or
components to exchange information and to use the
information that has been exchanged (IEEE, 1990).
2.1 Enterprise Interoperability
Frameworks
The main purpose of an interoperability framework
is to provide an organising mechanism so that con-
cepts, problems and knowledge on EI can be repre-
196
GuÃl’dria W.
Towards an Integrated Model for Enterprise Interoperability.
DOI: 10.5220/0005426001960201
In Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2014), pages 196-201
ISBN: 978-989-758-032-1
Copyright
c
2014 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
sented in a more structured way (Chen et al., 2008).
So far, the most known EI frameworks are: ATHENA
(Advanced Technologies for interoperability Hetero-
geneous Enterprise Networks and Applications) In-
teroperability Framework (AIF) (Ruggaber, 2006),
the European Interoperability Framework (CompTIA,
2004), the E-health interoperability framework (NE-
HTA, 2005) and the Framework for Enterprise In-
teroperability (FEI). The review of the different as-
pects and the frameworks coverage of these frame-
works lead to identify the main elements in EI context
(i.e. (a) the three interoperability aspects: conceptual,
technical and organisational, (b) four concerns of EI:
business, process, service and data); however, none
of the EI frameworks defines interoperability, or pro-
poses to improve it.
2.2 Ontology of Enterprise
Interoperability (OoEI)
The OoEI aims at formally defining Enterprise Inter-
operability (EI) while providing a framework to de-
scribe problems and related solutions pertaining to the
interoperability domain. Figure 1 gives an extract of
the OoEI meta-model. Interoperability concerns, de-
fine the content of interoperation that may take place
at various levels of the enterprise (data, service, pro-
cess, business). Interoperability barriers identify var-
ious obstacles to interoperability in three categories
(conceptual, technological, and organizational).More
details can be found in (Gu
´
edria, 2012).
2.3 Maturity Model for Enterprise
Interoperability (MMEI)
A maturity model is a framework that describes for a
specific area of interest a number of levels of sophis-
tication at which activities in this area can be carried
out (Alonso et al., 2010). In our case, the specific area
of interest is EI. EI maturity can be measured in two
ways: a priori where the measure relates to the po-
tentiality of a system to be interoperable with a possi-
ble future partner whose identity is not known at the
moment of evaluation, a posteriori where the mea-
sure relates to the compatibility measure between two
(or more) known systems willing to interoperate. De-
veloping interoperability can induce many problems
that have to be solved in order to achieve targeted ob-
jectives. Solving these problems may be a long it-
erative procedure which can fail due to the lack of
a consensus between partners or the high cost of the
solution applicability. Preventing and solving inter-
operability problems before they occur is simpler and
usually less costly than developing corrective actions.
Within this context, a priori assessment deserves par-
ticular attention in order to help enterprises knowing
their strengths and weaknesses in terms of interoper-
ability and undertaking improvement actions. Many
maturity models have been developed in the literature.
Among them, we find the Maturity Model for Enter-
prise Interoperability (MMEI) which is the only one
defined within an a priori context of interoperability.
A review and a comparison of them could be found in
(Ford, 2008), (Gu
´
edria et al., 2008), (Gu
´
edria, 2012).
MMEI (Gu
´
edria et al., 2013) allows companies to
evaluate their potentiality to interoperate, in order to
know the probability that they have to support effi-
cient interoperation and to detect precisely the weak-
nesses that are sources of interoperability problems.
Moreover, MMEI differs from all other maturity mod-
els dedicated to interoperability so far. It is intended
to cover the three interoperability levels (conceptual,
technological, and organizational) at each of the EI
concerns (business, process, service, data), as de-
fined in the Framework for Enterprise Interoperabil-
ity (FEI) (Chen, 2006). MMEI defines five levels of
interoperability maturity (Gu
´
edria et al., 2013). A
general view of the MMEI model with its contents
is given by Table 1. Each one of the maturity levels is
an instantiation of this general view with an evolution
of the content regarding the evolution of the level.
3 INTEGRATED MODEL
In this section, we propose to define an integrated
model allowing improving EI while sharing a com-
mon understanding of it. This integrated model comes
in response to a research gap that we have been identi-
fied when reviewing the interoperability related work
in the previous section. Indeed, each one of the pre-
sented interoperability frameworks and models has a
unique purpose as presented in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Enterprise Interoperability Frameworks and Pur-
poses.
Towards an Integrated Model for Enterprise Interoperability
197
Figure 1: Extract of the OoEI.
Table 1: General view of MMEI levels structure.
Conceptual Technological Organizational
Business Business models, en-
terprise visions, strate-
gies, objectives, poli-
cies
Infrastructure, technol-
ogy
Work methods, busi-
ness rules, and organi-
zational structure
Process Processes models Tools supporting pro-
cesses modeling and
execution
Responsibilities, Pro-
cess management and
rules
Service Services models Tools supporting ser-
vices and applications
Responsibilities, ser-
vice and application
management and rules
Data Data models, (seman-
tic, syntax)
Data storage and ex-
change devices
Responsibilities, data
management and rules
To deal with this gap, this section proposes to de-
fine the integrated model based on the OoEI and the
MMEI models.
The integration of the MMEI and OoEI will al-
low the enrichment of the OoEI with concepts and de-
tails from the MMEI, allowing the enterprise to better
diagnose its interoperability problems and find suit-
able solutions. On the other hand the OoEI contains
a considerable knowledge that may help the MMEI
assessing the Interoperability readiness of a given en-
terprise.
The structure of MMEI is based on a simplified
version of FEI where we can find the EI concerns
(i.e. Business, process, service and data) and interop-
erability barriers (i.e. conceptual, technological and
organizational), as depicted by table 1. These con-
cepts can also be found in the OoEI (Naudet et al.,
2008).
Moreover MMEI and OoEI follow a systemic
view (Von Bertalanffy, 1968), where an enterprise is
seen as a complex system. The content of each cell of
the table 1 can be related to the OoEI. Figure 3 shows
how these cells can be related to the OoEI. The OoEI
concepts are presented with white ellipses while con-
cepts related to the MMEI model are presented with
gray color.
Based on the OoEI and MMEI review, three main
dimensions of EI are considered: Interoperability as-
pects (conceptual, organizational and technical), EI
concerns (business, process, service and data) and
Interoperability barriers (Conceptual, Organizational,
and Technological). These are represented by the con-
cepts: InteroperabilityAspect, InteroperabilityCon-
cern and InteroperabilityBarrier respectively. These
are all modeled with their different constituents rep-
resented here as dimensions describing Enterprise In-
teroperability, as shown in figure 3.
Within the context of EI, interoperability prob-
lems are represented by the InteroperabilityBarrier
concept. The term barrier is defined as an incom-
patibility, obstructing the sharing of information and
preventing exchanging services (Chen et al., 2006).
Fourth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
198
Figure 3: Extract of the integrated model.
The establishment of interoperability (with its three
aspects) consists of removing identified barriers (con-
ceptual barrier, organizational barrier or/and techno-
logical barrier). Hence each InteroperabilityBarrier
is related to the corresponding InteroperabilityAspect
(see figure 3).
For each OrgaizationalBarrier, the criteria that
need to be verified are the definition and compatibil-
ity of the Responsibilities, Work methods, Business
rules, Organization structure and strategy, as defined
by the MMEI model (see table 1). This is repre-
sented by the concepts Responsibilities, Work meth-
ods, Business rules, Organization structure and strat-
egy which are considered by the Organizational Bar-
rier. Similarly, the concepts of Business model, Pro-
cess model, Service model and Data model are con-
cerned with the ConceptualBarrier and the concepts
of IT infrastructure, IT tools supporting data storage
and Exchange devices are concerned with the Tech-
nologicalBarrier.
This model can be used thereafter to have the re-
quired knowledge to assess the EI of the considered
enterprise. The gray MMEI concepts (gray ellipses)
in the figure 3 presents the requirements and related
information that need to be verified. For example, in
order to assess the EI at organizational level, some
of the requirements that assessors have to verify are
whether responsibilities supporting business, process,
service and data interoperability concerns are prop-
erly defined and that are compatible with those used
within the enterprise environment.
4 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
To better understand the application and the use of
the above defined conceptual framework, it is inter-
esting to check its utility by an illustrative example.
A potential interoperability problem exists if the con-
Towards an Integrated Model for Enterprise Interoperability
199
sidered enterprise, say E has no defined models, tools,
rules, etc. or that it uses incompatible ones with those
used in its environment (including its partners, clients,
providers, etc.). For example, if E adopts 50 hours of
employment per week while being situated in France
or Luxembourg, this will create incompatibility with
the environment of the enterprise where a maximum
of 40 hours is fixed for the employment. Figure 4
illustrates this interoperability problem that can be
detected when assessing the interoperability of E to-
wards unknown partner.
Figure 4: Illustrative Example with the enterprise E.
Figure 5: Illustrative Example with enterprises E1 and E2.
Suppose now that a particular interoperability
project starts (i.e. the partner is known but the in-
teroperations haven’t started yet), barriers to interop-
erability can exist at each level of the company and of
its partner. An interoperability problem exists if the
two companies have different strategies. For example,
one of the company, say E1 adopts a Low cost strategy
which focuses on producing the product by lowering
costs and maximizing income (by increasing volume),
while E2 is adopting a differentiation strategy which
focuses on producing different products (better) than
those of competitors. Differentiation usually includes
the processes for taking your product directly to con-
sumers. So processing and marketing are involved.
Differentiation in small markets often involves creat-
ing a personal relationship with consumers. An appli-
cation of the defined conceptual model is presented in
figure 5.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have proposed an integrated model
based on the Maturity Model of Enterprise Interop-
erability (MMEI) and the ontology of Enterprise In-
teroperability (OoEI) concepts. The integration was
facilitated by the common basis of the two models
(systemics) and the use of the Framework of Enter-
prise Interoperability (FEI) by both of them. The
integrated model allows having the required knowl-
edge for the interoperability assessment and save hu-
man efforts in gathering information and validating it
for each assessment. The interoperability assessment
based on the integrated model allows diagnosing in-
teroperability problems. This is facilitated by the na-
ture of the OoEI which were conceived in a problem
solving perspective. Future work are planned to im-
prove this first version of the integrated model in or-
der to implement an automatic assessment tool. The
idea is to develop an ontology-based software infras-
tructure for web-based self-evaluation for enterprise
interoperability. This tool will help to diagnose in-
teroperability problems. This can be complemented
by proposing solutions to interoperability problems,
using best practices that have been developed for the
MMEI (Gu
´
edria, 2012).
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