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Concepts and Vocabulary
Today enterprise integration and design knowledge is at best descriptive, ad hoc, and pre-scientific. Despite the common elements across projects and businesses, every major Information Technology (IT) project in enterprise integration is usually treated as a "one-off". Further, the different disciplines involved understand and believe different things even about the same enterprise integration concepts. For example, the ubiquitous 'process' means different things to the different practicing disciplines of business, systems engineering, and computer science. Consequently, strategies for integration are not only re-invented on a project-by-project basis but left to the particular experiences of the team of practitioners. Many have observed the devastating effect of this "knowledge gap" on project success.
We approach the IT challenges by acknowledging the rapidly changing business environment, limits of predictability, and through the development of patterns that can be locally deployed to address emergent needs. The mining of patterns begins with industry-accepted best practice knowledge. Typical patterns incorporate principles of business, systems engineering, computer science and related policies. Research challenges addressed include the representation and deployment of patterns that are highly configurable and can be assembled into solutions that deliver value. Reference implementations of patterns have features such as self-describing, self-assembly, and self-monitoring to support the adaptive real-time enterprise. Some application areas include - first responder management, one-stop customer response management, compliance and information assurance, and case management.
An important aspect of the Adaptive Complex Enterprise approach is to identify deep structural similarities within successful information solutions. By identifying patterns and their interactions with underlying back-office enterprise systems, self-regulation of business agents, and feedback or adaptation in their dynamics, we can isolate shared IT services. These deep structural similarities can also be exploited to transfer methods of analysis and understanding from one application field to another. In addition to developing a deeper understanding in the use of IT services, such interdisciplinary approaches helps us identify the patterns underlying the behavior of complex systems, and move us toward a greater degree of re-use as well as the successful use of IT for business adaptation.
CETI research and practice addresses challenges by characterizing Adaptive Complex Enterprise systems as follows:
