Criterios de los Estudiantes de la UTE Loja

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realization of an enterprise‘s organizational structure, business processes, information systems, and IT infrastructure. The review of relevant literatures indicates the need for EA in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), important drivers of the economy, as they struggle with problems related to a lack of structure and

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overview of their business. However, existing EA frameworks are perceived as too complex and, to date, none of the EA approaches are sufficiently adapted to the SME context. Although EA might offer SMEs a solution to typical problems related to a lack of overview, strategic awareness, IT planning, and business-IT alignment, EA approaches that cater for the specificities of small businesses are still missing.

In a SME, the entrepreneur (CEO) controls the enterprise. However, while most entrepreneurs have a good knowledge about their company, the overview tends to stay unspoken. This can cause some problems to occur as listed in (section 2.8).

From these problems and the SME criteria in 2.8.1, three major areas were identified for improvement which would create value and reduce operation cost in SMEs. These include;

(i) Standardization of business processes.

(ii) Integration of systems.

(iii) Better use of technology to improve process efficiency.

It is obvious that EA could help to reduce these problems; however, this area of research is not yet totally satisfactory because existing EA frameworks and methods are generally unknown and unused concept in SMEs.

3.2.1 Analysis of Existing Enterprise Architecture and Models

Although significant amount of research has been done and many models proposed on enterprise architecture and enterprise architecture frameworks, analysis of literature and documentations shows that there are some drawbacks in the existing methods and EA frameworks and methods are generally unknown and unused concept in SMEs.

. They include;

(a) The information system architecture proposed by Zachman (Zachman, 1987) (See 2.6.2.1) offered a systematic taxonomy of concepts for relating the components that describe and represent the real world system and its implementation. The drawbacks are;

i. It is only a reference framework – has no defined methodology ii. It is complex and large because of the number of cells

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iii. The metaphor used throughout the Zachman Framework is that of the architectural development of a building, or manufactured product and does not adequately suit the reality of information system development.

iv. Independent models: The purpose of a framework is not to fill in all its cells, but a framework should be a logic structure for classifying and organizing the different architectural descriptions of the enterprise. There should be consistency between the models, not just a bunch of independent models;

v. No model for enterprise application classification.

vi. The entities were defined (architectural views) without attributes that contribute to them.

vii. The Zachman‘s Framework did not suggest how resources are aligned to support corporate goals and strategies;

viii. Has never been adapted for SMEs because of the complex nature.

(b) The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) (See 2.6.2.4) proposed by the Open Group is a framework for developing enterprise architecture. It is described as a set of documentation published by The Open Group (Open Group, 2002). The drawbacks are;

i. It uses a bottom-up construction focus of the enterprise functional system, defining at the beginning elementary tasks and then gathering them into enterprise entities to satisfy strategic objective.

ii. Current version is excessively IT-Centric.

iii. Business architecture is poorly described.

iv. Over-emphasis on low level technology architecture Entity definition without attributes.

v. Has never been adapted for SMEs because of the complex nature

(c) Federal Enterprise Architecture Frameworks (FEAF) (See 2.6.2.5) proposed by the council of Chief Information Officers of the US Government in the 1990‘s targets to promote shared development for common federal processes, interoperability and sharing

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of information among federal agencies and other governmental entities (CIO Council, 2001). The drawbacks are;

i. It is a proprietary framework owned by U.S government to support their operations.

ii. It is only a reference framework – has no defined methodology.

iii. Has never been adapted for SMEs because of the complex nature.

(d). Architecture for Integrated Information Systems (ARIS)(See 2.6.2.3) proposed by Professor Scheer at the University of Saarbrucken in Germany (Scheer, 1996), focuses only on the design of enterprise information systems. The disadvantages are;

i. It did not include any design methodology.

ii. ARIS is specifically for information system and did not consider the enterprise and business that owns the system.

iii. Methodology is based on normal system development.

iv. Has never been adapted for SMEs because of the complex nature

3.2.2 Weakness of Existing Models of Architectural Frameworks

i. From the analysis, it can be seen that these architecture models were focused mainly on large enterprises. They did not consider the nature of small and medium enterprises (SME‘s). It would be interesting to prove these architecture models (EA) usefulness in SMEs.

ii. The existing enterprise architectures lack the approach that can be used by SMEs to develop their EA models and manage their EA.

iii. The existing architectures lacks information about how these frameworks achieve business/IT alignment, manage system complexity and how they identify the concept of business value in SMEs.

iv. Most of the commonly used information systems architecture approaches has not been able to identify scope and fully define the boundaries of its information systems. This in turn, leads to a high level of data redundancy and poor quality information.

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v. The existing systems/architectures did not offer a complete solution that models all the characteristics of an enterprise system in an SME.

vi. The Infrastructure model is based on technologies and hardware without considering Liveware (people). Also power, energy and security problems were not considered as it is obtained in developing countries like Nigeria.

vii. Most of the models did not consider evolution and improvement in their methodology.

viii. The existing models failed to fully capture the unique characteristics of enterprise system in SME, that is, they support poor IT - business alignment in SME.

ix. The systems developed using most of the architectures are complex in nature based on the fact that the architecture is complex.

x. None of the models have been adapted in EA for SME context.

The result shows that a lot of research has been done on EA field, still hardly anything is known about its use in the context of a small and medium sized enterprise (SME).

Because of some specific characteristics of SMEs, however it will be remarkable to apply EA to an SME.

3.2.3 Feasibility Study

During this process, investigations were thoroughly made in order to develop the new architecture model for SMEs (Integrated Model) in sufficient depth. Based on the review made of different existing architectures, two types of architectures were identified with different objectives. These are (i) The ones directed toward the development of

‗integrated information system‘ and (ii) The ones which cover the ‗whole enterprise integration project‘. The latter are more oriented toward the problem this dissertation is

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focused. The ‗reference architecture (RA) for integration of information‘ has the objective of developing an integrated information infrastructure that communicates and coordinates the different technological devices that generate, process, distribute and supply information. One of the most well known is the ARIS Architecture. The ‗reference architectures for enterprise integration‘ are oriented towards the integration of the whole enterprise, considering not only the technological aspect of the system but also the economic, social and human ones. Among the most well known ones are CIMOSA, TOGAF, and FEAF. Based on the information assessment (what is required), information collection, it was observed and agreed that the implementation of an integrated framework for enterprise system will help resolve the problems of enterprise IT systems complexity, achieve better alignment of information technology with business objectives and realize real business value from the implementation of the system. The integrated model for small and medium scaled enterprise system was designed as an instantiation of enterprise architecture in terms of a set of software modules, computer platforms, network components, and databases assembled in such a way as to be able to process business transactions and thus meet all the system requirements specified in that Enterprise Architecture and provide a methodology for continuous evolution based on Continuous improvement process.

3.3 Analysis of the Proposed Model: An Integrated Model for Small and