Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

An information system architecture for build- and engineer-to-order production of application services

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Information Systems and e-Business Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In manufacturing, substantial efficiency gains have been achieved through industrialization. Key concepts of industrialization include standardization, automation, and modularization. Transferring these to IT service production promises increased efficiency. ERP systems apply such concepts and have been an integrating tool for making production for manufacturers more efficient. However, previous research has considered ERP systems for IT service providers either very broadly or only from a business or technical perspective. This article investigates how to apply the ERP system concept comprehensively to a specific type of IT service provider. To this end, application services are prescribed as being composed of three types of configuration models. This helps to achieve a composition of (IT) application services that is comparable to physical parts, and it further supports their management and automated production within an ERP system. An information system architecture with the ERP system at its core is presented. It supports application service production. All relevant service lifecycle phases are considered and a consistent domain model is provided that connects business and technical layer entities. Targeted companies can improve their application service production in terms of quality and efficiency by leveraging this novel automation- and model-based approach.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The EU SME definition is used for company size categorization (European Commission 2011). A company is categorized as large if it exceeds the definition’s limits.

  2. https://puppet.com.

  3. https://eclipse.org/papyrus/.

References

  • Ahmad S, Schroeder RG, Mallick DN (2010) The relationship among modularity, functional coordination, and mass customization: implications for competitiveness. Eur J Innov Manag 13(1):46–61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Akkermans H, Van der Horst H (2002) Managing IT infrastructure standardisation in the networked manufacturing firm. Int J Prod Econ 75(1):213–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson E, Lam Ll, Eschinger C, Cournoyer S, Correia JM, Wurster LF, Contu R, Biscotti F, Liu VK, Eid T, Pang C, Swinehart HH, Yeates M, Petri G, Bell W (2013) Forecast overview: public cloud services, worldwide, 2011–2016, 4Q12 update. Technical report G00247462, Gartner Inc. https://www.gartner.com/doc/2332215/forecast-overview-public-cloud-services. Accessed 31 July 2014

  • Armbrust M, Fox A, Griffith R, Joseph AD, Katz R, Konwinski A, Lee G, Patterson D, Rabkin A, Stoica I, Zaharia M (2010) A view of cloud computing. Commun ACM 53(4):50–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker J, Poeppelbuss J, Venker D, Schwarze L (2011) Industrialisierung von IT-Dienstleistungen: Anwendung industrieller Konzepte und deren Auswirkungen aus Sicht von IT-Dienstleistern. In: Bernstein A, Schwalbe G (eds) Tagungsband der 10. Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik. AIS Electronic Library, Zurich, pp 345–354

    Google Scholar 

  • Betz CT (2011) Architecture and patterns for IT. Morgan Kaufmann, Waltham

    Google Scholar 

  • Binz T, Breiter G, Leyman F, Spatzier T (2012) Portable cloud services using TOSCA. IEEE Internet Comput 16(3):80–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • BMC (2017) Remedy AR system API and integration interfaces overview (C, Java, .NET, Web Services, email, Ruby, Jython, VB, direct SQL). http://bit.ly/2sHnYX0. Last accessed 15 March 2017

  • Breiter G, Behrendt M (2009) Life cycle and characteristics of services in the world of cloud computing. IBM J Res Dev 53(4):3:1–3:8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cardoso J, Bostrom RP, Sheth A (2004) Workflow management systems and erp systems: differences, commonalities, and applications. Inf Technol Manag 5(3):319–338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ebert N (2009) Produktionsplanung und -steuerung bei IT-Dienstleistern. Ph.D. thesis, Universität St. Gallen

  • Ebert N, Uebernickel F, Hochstein A, Brenner W (2007) A service model for the development of management systems for IT-enabled services. In: Hoxmeier JA, Hayne S (eds) Proceedigns of the 13th Americas conference on information systems (AMCIS). AIS Electronic Library, Keystone, pp 455–462

    Google Scholar 

  • Eilam T, Kalantar MH, Konstantinou AV, Pacifici G, Pershing J, Agrawal A (2006) Managing the configuration complexity of distributed applications in internet data centers. IEEE Commun Mag 44(3):166–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenhardt KM (1989) Building theories from case study research. Acad Manag Rev 14(4):532–550

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • European Commission (2011) What is an SME? http://bit.ly/2boTaz7. Last accessed 23 Feb 2017

  • Evans A, Kent S (1999) Core meta-modelling semantics of UML: The pUML approach. Springer, Berlin, pp 140–155

    Google Scholar 

  • Fletcher C, Williams DP, Wurster LF (2016) Magic quadrant for application release automation. Technical report, G00302195, Gartner Inc

  • Fowler MP (2003) Patterns of enterprise application architecture. Addison Wesley, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Glohr C, Kellermann J, Dörnemann H (2014) The IT factory: a vision of standardization and automation. In: Abolhassan F (ed) The road to a modern IT factory. Springer, New York, pp 101–109

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gmach D, Rolia J, Cherkasova L, Kemper A (2007) Workload analysis and demand prediction of enterprise data center applications. In: 10th international symposium on workload characterization, IEEE, IISWC, pp 171–180

  • Gronau N (2010) Enterprise resource planning—Architektur, Funktionen und Management von ERP-Systemen. Oldenburg, München, Germany

  • Guay M, Pang C, Hestermann C, Montgomery N (2015) Magic quadrant for single-instance ERP for product-centric midmarket companies. Technical report G00272540, Gartner Inc

  • Gutenberg E (1983) Fundamentals of business economics: production (original German title: Grundlagen der Betriebswirtschaftslehre: Die Produktion. Erster Band.). Enzyklopädie der Rechts- und Staatswissenschaft, vol 1. Springer, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Hess T, Loos P, Buxmann P, Erek K, Frank U, Gallmann J, Gersch M, Zarnekow R, Zencke P (2012) ICT providers: a relevant topic for business and information systems engineering? Bus Inf Syst Eng 5(6):367–373

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hevner A, March S, Park J, Ram S (2004) Design science in information systems research. MIS Q 28(1):75–105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hintsch J, Kramer F, Jamous N, Turowski K (2016) The application system landscapes of IT service providers: a multi case study. In: Li G, Yu Y (eds) Proceedings of the 4th international conference on enterprise systems, IEEE, Los Alamitos, California, Washington, Tokyo, ES, pp 122–131

  • Hunnebeck L (2011) ITIL—service design. The Stationery Office, Norwich

    Google Scholar 

  • Kastensson Å (2014) Developing lightweight concepts in the automotive industry: taking on the environmental challenge with the SåNätt project. J Clean Prod 66:337–346

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirschnick J, Calero JMA, Wilcock L, Edwards N (2010) Toward an architecture for the automated provisioning of cloud services. IEEE Commun Mag 48(12):124–131

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klaus H, Rosemann M, Gable G (2000) What is ERP? Inf Syst Front 2(2):141–162

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leymann F, Fehling C, Wagner S, Wettinger J (2016) Native cloud applications: why virtual machines, images and containers miss the point! In: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on cloud computing and service science, SciTePress, CLOSER, pp 7–15

  • Lloyd V (2011) ITIL—continual service improvement. The Stationery Office, Norwich

    Google Scholar 

  • Mastelić T, García AG, Brandić I (2016) Towards uniform management of multi-layered cloud services by applying model-driven development. J Syst Softw 121:358–371. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2016.01.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mell P, Grance T (2011) The NIST definition of cloud computing. Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology 800-145, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD

  • Nelson LE, Staten J, Williamson K (2014) State of cloud platform standards: Q1 2014—OpenStack steps forward to become the new De Facto model. http://bit.ly/2sHCjlW. Last accessed 30 July 2014

  • Oesterreich TD, Teuteberg F (2016) Understanding the implications of digitisation and automation in the context of industry 4.0: a triangulation approach and elements of a research agenda for the construction industry. Comput Ind 83:121–139

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • OMG (2015) Unified modeling language, version 2.5

  • Owens D (2010) Securing elasticity in the cloud. Commun ACM 53(6):46–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peffers K, Tuunanen T, Rothenberger MA, Chatterjee S (2008) A design science research methodology for information systems research. J Manag Inf Syst 24(3):45–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinnow A (2009) Das Rechenzentrum als Produktionsstätte für IT-Dienstleistungen - Kapazitätswirtschaft in virtualisierten Rechenzentren. Ph.D. thesis, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg

  • Praeg CP, Spath D (2008) Perspectives of IT-service quality management: a concept for life cycle based quality management of IT-services. In: Cater-Steel A (ed) Information technology governance and service management: frameworks and adaptations, information science reference, chapter XXII. Hershey, New York, pp 381–407

    Google Scholar 

  • Rance S (2011) ITIL—service transition. The Stationery Office, Norwich

    Google Scholar 

  • Rimal BP, Jukan A, Katsaros D, Goeleven Y (2011) Architectural requirements for cloud computing systems: an enterprise cloud approach. J Grid Comput 9(1):3–26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saenz de Ugarte B, Artiba A, Pellerin R (2009) Manufacturing execution system—a literature review. Prod Plan Control 20(6):525–539

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • SAP AG (2015) The value of SAP solution manager 7.1! http://bit.ly/2tF3dIy. Last accessed 19 June 2017

  • Scheer AW (1998) Business process engineering study edition: reference models for industrial enterprises. Springer, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schrödl H, Bensch S (2013) E-procurement of cloud-based information systems—a product-service system approach. In: Baskerville R, Chau M (eds) Proceedings of the 34th international conference on information systems, ICIS, pp 1–19

  • ServiceNow (2015) Finance service management. http://bit.ly/2sOzLD8. Last accessed 24 Nov 2015

  • ServiceNow (2015) Product documentation: list of available integrations. http://bit.ly/2rNd2Tl. Last accessed 15 Mar 2017

  • Sonnenberg C, vom Brocke J (2012) Evaluations in the science of the artificial—reconsidering the build-evaluate pattern in design science research, DESRIST. Springer, Berlin, pp 381–397

    Google Scholar 

  • Spinellis D (2012) Don’t install software by hand. IEEE Softw 29(4):86–87

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stahlknecht P, Hasenkamp U (2005) Einführung in die Wirtschafsinformatik, 11th edn. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson M, Hendry LC, Kingsman BG (2005) A review of production planning and control: the applicability of key concepts to the make-to-order industry. Int J Prod Res 43(5):869–898

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Susarla A, Barua A, Whinston AB (2003) Understanding the service component of application service provision: an empirical analysis of satisfaction with ASP services. MIS Q 27(1):91–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Talwar V, Milojicic D, Wu Q, Pu C, Yan W, Jung G (2005) Approaches for service deployment. IEEE Internet Comput 9(2):70–80

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wettinger J, Andrikopoulos V, Leymann F, Strauch S (2016) Middleware-oriented deployment automation for cloud applications. IEEE Trans Cloud Comput PP(99):1–1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zarnekow R (2007) Produktionsmanagement von IT-Dienstleistungen: Grundlagen, Aufgaben und Prozesse. Springer, Heidelberg

    Google Scholar 

  • Zarnekow R, Brenner W, Pilgram U (2006) Integrated information management: applying successful industrial concepts in IT. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johannes Hintsch.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hintsch, J., Kramer, F. & Turowski, K. An information system architecture for build- and engineer-to-order production of application services. Inf Syst E-Bus Manage 16, 649–682 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-018-0369-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-018-0369-z

Keywords

Navigation