Newer Approach to Flexible Business Architecture
of Modern Enterprise
Alexander Gromoff, Nikolay Kazantsev, Mikhail Ponfilenok and Yuila Stavenko
National Research University Higher School of Economics, BPM Department,
Science & Education Centre of Information Control Technologies, Moscow, Russia
Keywords: Business Architecture, Business Flexibility, Enterprise Architecture (EA), Subject-Oriented Business
Process Management (S-BPM), SOA, Real-Time Business Architecture (RBA), Cloud Computing.
Abstract: In this study with the aim to increase the agility of enterprise we try to analyze a co-adoption of modern
concepts: application of enterprise architecture (EA) in combination with real-time business process
generation on cloud-based service. The process of business model generation was simulated by
transformation of particular business request in semantic form into sequence of executable blocks thus
forming workflow. During the generation all necessary requirements for resources, such as information,
intellectual and professional skills, inputs and outputs, quality and operational risk limitations, controls and
monitoring, are formed. Next the formed requirements are to be satisfied by appropriate selections from the
Cloud facilities and approved by expert commission. Finally after several iterations the required business
model will be created in reality and could be executed with predicted results.
1 INTRODUCTION
The problem of how organizations can successfully
deal with unpredictable, dynamic, and constantly
changing environments has been a prevailing topic
both in industry and academia for a few decades.
«Flexible enterprise» - one of the most popular
terms considered as possessing the ability to adjust
and respond to change. The idea of flexible
organization has originated from the contingency
approach in organizational research. This theory
represents organisation as an organic and open
system and there is a relationship of interdependence
between an organisation and its environment, as well
as within and between its various sub-systems.
According to contingent approach CEOs should
focus on organisational design as a combination of
sub-systems, define objectives and formulate
policies and plans according to the prevailing
environmental conditions and integrate them into
practice in an open system framework.
Strictly following to strategic management in
practice, CEOs lack system approach; they do
practically focus on the revenue growth as a general
goal of creating value to shareholders. The technical
aspect is normally out of consideration at this level
(management and financial aspects are the priority),
despite of the fact that the agility of an enterprise is a
key factor of the goal success in the fluctuated
market. In this context agility is seen as an adequate
reaction or reflection on currently changing
environments as inside, as well outside enterprise
that results in change in business processes logic, IT
resources allocation and organizational structure.
Enterprise agility is caused by proper Business/IT
alignment in frames of an organic and open system:
Enterprise Architecture (EA) (Ross et al., 2006).
The development of a flexible EA framework
using models presents a serious challenge; the
following components of the enterprise have to be
taken into consideration: business perspective,
organizational structure, applications, data, and
technology. Each of these elements is
multidimensional and complex itself. Quality of
constructed EA becomes a measurable characteristic
of Agility being depended from delay time and
solution accuracy.
For upcoming market challenges, companies
seek for new innovative solutions that could support
their business needs, and in reality proper
application of Information technologies can offer
them apparently newer look of business and lead to
competitive advantage of the enterprise.
326
Gromoff A., Kazantsev N., Ponfilenok M. and Stavenko J..
Newer Approach to Flexible Business Architecture of Modern Enterprise.
DOI: 10.5220/0004446403260332
In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2013), pages 326-332
ISBN: 978-989-8565-61-7
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
2 RESARCH MOTIVATION
AND METHODOLOGY
Participating in a large number of consulting and
educational projects in Russia, the authors face
certain customer problems:
- Impossibility to reflect changes of
requirements rendered to business
(compliance) in terms of information system;
- Fear of losing control over the information
systems while optimization;
- Impossibility to optimize organizational
structure without gap in productivity and
operability of business structure;
- High dependence on specific person at a
certain place;
- Threat of financial risk with changes or
modernization of information systems.
The primary motivation for this research was to
show the systemic nature of these problems and
provide strategic look to the managers’ attitude,
readiness and ability to implement changes in
organization, management and IT practices. We
aimed to keep the enterprise architecture consistent
with the external and internal challenges using the
advanced EA approach. Finally our motivation was
in connecting the academic theoretical view on
business architecture with actual demands of
business (practical view).
In preview of further literature review it’s
essential to express the key-pipeline of the EA
development.
First step consists in business goal content
analysis, up-to the form of clearly structured
business target horizon, these results were obtained
in earlier works during experiments with content
extraction from current information flows (a
prototype of workflow), (Gromoff et al. 2005). Next
is a process of generation required BPs dedicated to
the particular low-end targets from a collection-set
of referenced best-practice processes. Up-to-date
this collection consists from more than 15 000
valued referenced process able to satisfy most
intrinsic targets and concentrated mainly in several
consultancy bases. Being removed to the social
access through clouds with certain price reduction it
could be a good basis for certain structural
approaches for automated business architecture
generation.
2.1 Literature Review
In the context of this research, the theoretical
foundation will be set in a form result of literature
review research in order to gather opinions from
scientific domain about current Enterprise
Architecture benefits in terms of flexibility, its
current issues and problems. We concentrated on
pitfalls of running of Enterprise Architectures and
potential issues that could emerge from ill-practicing
of EA.
Regarding the critique and pitfalls of EA, the
number of related aspects was found during
literature review. Very often in the literature, EA is
criticized for:
- The lack or even absence of
stakeholders/business group’s involvement
caused by rigidity of inner business processes
and predetermined nature of organization (Van
Diepen, 2000), (Jonkers H. et al, 2003), (Lange
et al., 2011), (Timmers, 1999);
- Poor alignment of IT and Business domains in
the organizations that result in emergence of
challenges to align Business strategy with IT
strategy (Brown et al., 2005) and to implement
effectively strategic change in terms of business
agility and time to market (Radeke, 2011);
- Lacking communication between enterprise
domains (Timmers, 1999), what is happening in
running EA’s domain architectures in
concordance of business, IT, organization, and
technology (Kluge et al, 2006), (Radeke, 2011);
- Cultural aspects (Hofstede,1991) such as, for
instance, organization and political problems are
not properly addressed by the running EAs
(Lange et al., 2011);
- Lack of solid concepts of EA addressing
complexity and maintenance (Timmers, 1999).
Following these issues many papers raise a concern
related to the lack of value in Enterprise
Architecture concepts and tools in the current state
of things (Brown et al., 2005), (Lankhorst, 2004),
(Osvalds, 2008), (Saha, 2006).
As a consequence to mitigate aforementioned
problems several attempts by the researches were
made. We mention in this context:
- research of Saha (2006) to create common
understanding of Enterprise Architecture;
- attempt to adjust the concept of EA to practical
application and to enable interoperability among
various business functions in the organization
(Dietz and Hoogervorst, 2011);
- its post-implementation benefits and agility
(Radeke, 2011).
Having outlined the most important aspects
regarding Enterprise Architecture pitfalls and
NewerApproachtoFlexibleBusinessArchitectureofModernEnterprise
327
proposed solutions from academics, we note that this
sound theoretical base from the academic sources
provides beneficial insights into the current state of
the Enterprise Architecture body of knowledge.
2.2 Five Paradigms of Business Model
Development
Providing strategic outlook to the critical challenges
faced by organizations in their quest for business
value in today's rapidly changing, technology-
enabled environment, we seek for solution in
combinations of several “building blocks” with
existing understanding of enterprise architecture
(EA) requirements, to create EA that could be
transformed according to business requirements
much quicker.
In order to overcome lack of flexibility and
adaptability or enterprises, authors attract the
attention to the following paradigms appeared in IT
the recent years:
- BSM, Business Service Management
(Rosemann, 2009);
- BPM, namely, business process management
(Scheer and Nuttgens, 2000);
- S-BPM, subject-oriented business process
management (Fleischmann, 2010);
- BPO, namely Business Process Outsourcing
(Nellis and Parker, 2006);
- ICS, I-Cloud Services (Gartner, 2009).
Both scholars and practitioners have rarely
attempted to estimate the influence combining all the
paradigms in frames of Enterprise Architecture. First
of all, it has happened due to different scientific
schools approaches and due to various views on
running processes.
Business Service Management deals with
strategic managerial decisions for an enterprise, e. g:
“make or buy”. In BPM knowledge area the question
of process modeling and optimization arises. S-BPM
as cutting-edge derivative from BPM (Fleischmann,
2010) puts the emphasize on post-industrial
economy knowledge workers, that allows them to
describe and execute processes jointly without top-
down directives and thump-up methods. Business
process outsourcing deals with near
shoring/offshoring of secondary business functions
and processes. Finally the I-Cloud Services makes
number of new business models possible that have
to be flexible in order to respond quickly to
changing circumstances and to adapt the business
model, if necessary (Boh and Yellin, 2007).
3 MODERN ERA OF
ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
In classical view of enterprise architecture model we
see three areas of possible innovation: business
service design (1), business service outsourcing (2)
and service-oriented architecture (SOA) (3).
3.1 Business Services Design
Classic Business Architects create blueprints (widely
known as business concepts) that represent the
business executives and managers viewpoints.
Respectively, this provides the basis for more
detailed designs and other organizational planning.
Information, Application, Security & Privacy, Policy
& Rules and Technology Architectures each
contribute to the design of required IT solutions
associated with organizational change. The design is
focused on business process modeling and
management. Throughout the design process,
architects help conveying possible innovation
opportunities arising from the world of technology
and how these opportunities contribute to business
objectives. The primary design provides an overall
definition of major business domains. The choices
made are extrapolated consistently into design based
on general organizational principles and on the
lower-level strategy statements.
Considering enterprise - system of business
processes as a self-adjusting system which is
flexibly reacting to environmental changes, Sheer
(2011) carried out top-down system management
that imposed serious restrictions on decomposition
level with compliance preservation of processes
models and real situation in business design. But
when the basic design is developed on the basis of
the top-level strategy statements only we neglect the
proficiency of employees that execute the processes
and have deeper technological engagement than
their managers in process optimization of their
working environment. Since business subjects are in
charge of responding to changing conditions they
should be distinguished from ordinary (routine)
business resources by their internal motivation to
reach business objectives and ability to have
coherent views with running business aims and,
indeed, as main feature, professionally gained skills
based on accumulated experience of the socialized
business group of subjects.
Fleischmann's approach to business processes
management known as subject-oriented approach
(S-BPM) successfully adds its value here. Based
on performers’ self-organization while formulated
ICEIS2013-15thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
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task accomplishment, it reflects the real executive
mechanism within almost any human activity
accordingly. However, picked up separately from
other approaches, it does not allow to create
bandage between strategy and processes of
organization and to achieve global optimization.
Except the strategic top-down target
decomposition, we assigned business activities to
various domains and the elements required
completing the responsibility for the domain using
bottom-up S-BPM approach (Gromoff and
Stavenko, 2011). S-BPM describes processes and
rearranges models immediately, imitates execution
of process models in order to achieve synergy by
comparing models with the colleagues using general
creative potential and dynamically connect external,
new intellectual resources and / or processes
performed by external.
3.2 Business Service Outsourcing
Business Service Management approach as it
provided by Australian research team lead
by Rosemann (2009) provides the opportunity
elaborates on outsourcing. Intended for the
management of corporate IT assets, this approach
provides a roadmap for isolation of business services
and integration of the services into a pyramid of
strategic requirements. Nowadays, management
technologies realizing such approach are in
formation stage. As prototypes of such outsourcing
technologies, we could mention: biological
organization of business and creation of financially
independent divisions, which were extended in the
late nineties – the beginning of the 2000th.
Researches claim that the outsourcing models
will be flexible in order to respond quickly to
changing circumstances and to adapt the business
model if necessary (Boh and Yellin, 2007). Cloud
services via Internet make number of new business
models possible (Gromoff and Kozhevnikov, 2011),
that gives extra outsourcing possibilities. By storing
services using cloud computing, it is possible for
enterprise customers or inner clients to exploit the
service twice (or more as long as it is required) in
various orchestrated combinations in real-time for
minimum time. While using cloud computing it is
possible to provide the response to executives about
project deadlines, implementation of a new product
or service for minimum time. The model of
application of cloud computing to business function,
e.g. cloud outsourcing of a business function could
bring fruitful results in the future (Gromoff,
Stavenko, 2011).
3.3 Service-Oriented Architecture 2.0
Any business function may be realized as a set of
services in the private corporate IT infrastructure
and in Cloud environment of the technologic
service-oriented architecture (SOA) of information
systems. SOA of 1990s itself was agile enough in
comparison with other IT Architecture structures but
the standardized set of services reacted to changing
business preferences with a severe time lag (time
needed to plan, estimate and launch an internal IT-
Project for adding new service or changing the
existing one). Now, when the vitality of business is
accelerated each year with e-solutions and global
marketing, the speed of reacting on changing client
demand is crucial. Here ICS Solutions combined
with freelance outsourcing gives real chance to
following latest trend completely. I-Cloud offered by
Gartner Company (Gartner, 2009) represents the
generalization of service-oriented architecture for
cross-corporate applications case. It allows
technologically independent implementation of
functions realization both inside company and out of
it. Being the technological tool, I-Cloud allows
allocating and realization of functionality
decomposition up to each expert (or a functional
role).
The technology of services choreography in
service-oriented architecture is well studied. The
most popular BPMN 2.0 standard realized in
Software AG product “WebMethods”, inherited
together with the acquired ARIS product all range of
BPM possibilities, contains full set of functionality
necessary for both: early (orchestration), and for late
(choreography) services linkage in uniform process.
Here we applied Metasonic S-BPM Suite to involve
the process participants in process of gathering fresh
data collected in real-time for new compositional
services.
From these considerations we obtain two
modifications of classical Information Service-
Oriented Architecture (SOA) with effect of synergy:
1. Firstly, reformations of executive activities
with the S-BPM approach, thus, transformation
from rigid process structure into Subject-
orientated Business Process moderation due to
market excellence requirement. This
transformation is organically realized in S-
BPM paradigm by lowest level of process
executives in ad-hoc mode, moderated by
senior expert responsible for goal achievement.
In this case, the real orchestration of real-time
market requirements is developed.
NewerApproachtoFlexibleBusinessArchitectureofModernEnterprise
329
2. Secondly, while monitoring the process of
moderation, we extract repetitive or long
lasting fragments of the processes and fix them
in the clouds for further usage. Thereby, a set
of extremely required services is obtained and
immediately become valid for exploitation.
Developers of these compositional services should
be provided with certain environment where the
convenient mechanism of services storage and
retrieval and also the mechanism of receiving money
for these services will be developed. The client
subscriptions mechanism on service will solve
another problem - sales of the same service to
several customers. In the offered Services–store (S-
store), each customer can leave the request for
creation of wanted service. Virtual SOA torrent
indexes services that have an intellectual property
risk and provide it to the interested users.
The business case of S-store seems to us as
follows: a company reconstructing its business
processes with orientation on S-BPM is able to
design certain Enterpriser Service Bus (ESB) where
arrive cloud services which were bought in S-store
as inputs. For instance, automating the HR function
in the company an enterprise architect chooses in S-
Store services from main vendors: SAP, ORACLE,
etc. After having bought the service, it is connected
to the tire and gets ready for exploitation. Thereby,
service is stored in a cloud and supported by a
vender. When standard service customization is
necessary, an inquiry is created online and exterior
developers (e.g. integration companies, freelancers)
customize this service in order to fulfil business
needs of concrete organization.
4 REAL-TIME BUSINESS
ARCHITECTURE
Combining the areas of possible innovation and
existing understanding of Enterprise Architecture
requirements, we anticipate movement of EA to
Real-time Business Architecture (RBA) that
becomes more flat and market adaptive and could
quicker be transformed according to business
requirements.
The new architecture contains on the one hand
the pseudo-constant – static component provided by
BPM and services corresponding to them in BSM;
and on the other hand the variable component -
dynamic component representing system of activity
which is always in process of constant changes and
improvement, described as system of business
processes, projects and the objectives.
Another feature of these transformations is
increased business mobility. This feature became
real not only because of created and used ‘tangible’
services but also because of ‘intangible’ ones, so
called ‘intellectual assets’. While solution of the
known task is developed by known, fixed and
established process, the new solution search of a
problem or unknown task is provided by this
intellectual asset constrained on a platform of
search-based applications (SBA). Therefore, instant
intellectual support is provided to modern business
architecture “just-in-time”. It will allow expanding,
and subsequently – dissolving organization borders
(see Figure 1).
The suggested approach to formation of real-time
architecture allows merger of listed achievements in
the uniform mechanism which can work within the
limits of traditional enterprise, providing high level
of flexibility and tune-ability of business, and in
cross-country and over corporate communities
frameworks, such, as crowd sourcing projects
(instead of traditional organizations) which are
gradually taking place in new knowledge economics.
Figure 1: Model of Real-time business architecture.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The carried out research presented in this work
shows the extended possibilities of Real-time
Business Architecture (Gromoff et al., 2012) in order
to support the modern environmental and
business/technology challenges and explains the
concept of its implementation. Provided approach
reforms market from classical market-of-
advertisement-use into market-of-value-use, because
of business accessibility since its transparent and
reflective nature representing core feature of S-BPM
approach. Launching new free services market it
responds to global trend of moving from static
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hierarchies (vertical structures) to flexible
electronically built markets. On this way it is
necessary to solve number of serious problems as
technical (safety and productivity at flexible
interaction of services), and organizational and
administrative character (assessment of quality of
competing services and qualification of related
performers, ensuring risks control in self-organizing
environment, ensuring quality in the subject-oriented
paradigm of management).
The further approaches and results of these
studies may be used afterwards for improvement the
processing and transferring of the complicated
unstructured information content within the
Enterprise 2.0, joined ventures or modern vertical
integrated organization.
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