Enterprise Integration and Standardisation

Abstract

Business re-engineering and enterprise integration efforts are supported very efficiently by enterprise modelling and supporting information technology. However, with the large number of competing modelling methodologies available and the incompatibilities of their supporting information technology, success in the market place is rather marginal. On the other hand the need for enterprise integration is increasing and will be even more so with the new paradigms of extended and virtual enterprises asking for global cooperations.

Standardisation efforts are needed which improve the understandability of enterprise models and provide easy interoperability between models from different partners. This will not only be very helpful for the users of such models but for the providers of the supporting information technology as well. Users will be able to link and evaluate their business processes in temporary cooperations and IT vendors will gain confidence in the market and see a return on investments in their product developments.

The paper will review the state of the art in enterprise modelling and integration and will draw conclusions on standardisation strategies.