Enterprise interoperability: information, services and processes for the interoperable economy and society

摘要

Networked business models are becoming an indisputable reality in today's economy (Legner and Lebreton 2007), and a recent Capgemini study concludes that companies need to "significantly increase their degree of collaboration as well as their networking capability" in order to be competitive and successful in the future (Falge et al. 2012). Hence, there is a development and drive towards an interoperable economy and society, affecting companies and their information, services and processes. Modern companies need a 'quality' referred to as enterprise interoperability, and here defined as" the ability to affect each other's operation in a defined way and, through this, to positively contribute to their own and each other's business objectives" (van Sinderen et al. 2013). This definition builds on the general IEEE definition of system interoperability ("the ability of two or more systems to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged", IEEE 1990), but emphasizes that interoperability must be meaningful and useful for the enterprises involved.