Knowing The Alternatives to Doing EISA - Research Paper Example

Running Head: Knowing the Alternatives to Doing EISA Knowing the Alternatives to Doing EISA: A Research Paper goes here Professional Specialization Name of your professor Date Knowing the Alternatives to Doing EISA Information Systems are almost indispensible for Enterprise business operations. Today, Enterprises not only require operating around the globe but most of the communication and information interchange depends on the availability and viability of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure within organization.

However, “Architecture is one of the most used (and abused) terms in the areas of software and systems engineering” (Axelord, 2012) and implementation of Enterprise Information Systems Architecture (EISA), either through Data Driven or Application Driven like CRMs, ERPs approach (TOGAF, 2011), remains an intensely debatable phenomenon, especially in terms of its cost and business value. With the rapid growth of EISA implementations in corporate world new enterprises are forced to adopt EISA one as soon as their business attains a specific level of growth.

This is an important decision to keep pace with the changing business environment and maintain a business competition with business rivals and enhanced communication mechanisms with other friendly corporate entities. The basic aim of EISA is to establish an interoperable environment for information systems to share information and resources among business partners. The amount of information, speed of communication, power of decision and adequate support of business processes automation are the key factor that triggers the need of a full scale EISA implementation.

Apart from the aspects of usability and utility EISA is a very expensive solution in terms of time, effort and resources. Achieving a sort of equilibrium EISA cost and value pushes the ITC engineers to strive for alternative that can be implemented at considerably affordable cost while compromising value part at the minimum. In general EISA approaches the enterprise information systems integration and information federation through “low-level automated information federation” and “information integration at application level” (Bajgoric, 2010).

The first part of EISA implementation is a major attributer in terms of complexity and cost which can be avoided through a care design of Enterprise Information Systems Architecture (EISA). Keeping in mind the inevitability of Enterprise Information Systems Architecture (EISA) and the higher costs of its implementation technologist require to strive for affordable alternatives. The technologists from various domains information systems need to articulate a modular design of EISA implementation where various modules can be implemented in peculiar corporate environments with minimum interdependencies.

This may reduce the cost of full implementation while businesses will be able to extract the benefits of EISA. Secondly, the standardization of tools used to implement these modules can help to reduce the cost considerably. The standardization will also encourage the development and alternatives in each domain of technology without fear of interoperability bottlenecks. Moreover, the induction of cloud computing paradigm has considerably changed EISAs were designed and maintained traditionally.

The technology can be utilized to restructure the Enterprise Information Systems Architecture implementation with partial ownership of infrastructure modules, to reduce the onus of maintenance and cost of maintaining full scale infrastructure. “Thus, the Cloud Computing paradigm has the most significant impact from an architecture design perspective on the Operational Model.” (Godinez et al., 2010) It must be kept in mind that large scale architectural transformations are serious in nature and requires considerate feasibility study and corporate intellect to ascertain the value that this change should bring to business.

Enterprise leaders not only need to adapt the emerging technologies but also need to keep the cost of information systems infrastructure low through smart outsourcing decisions which may include architecture repository, communication mechanism and developmental efforts, etc. “The current chaotic, unplanned environments do not provide enough business value and are not sustainable over the longer term.” (Godinez et al., 2010). There are other conceivably practical alternatives of Enterprise Information Systems Architecture that can be worked out through a mix of available technologies to reduce the cost of the infrastructure without compromising overall throughput of the underlying information systems.

The Enterprise Information Systems Architecture (EISA) alternatives are supposed to be a different mix of available resources with varying technological depth and affordable costs. The mix needs to be modular in nature where each module is an independent whole to exploit extensive possibilities of out sourcing. The ultimate objective is to help enterprises in choosing a ready-mix of architectural components that best suit their requirements to reach the information highway. References Axelrod, S. (2012). Quality Data Through Enterprise Information Architecture.

Retrieved from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266338.aspx Bajgoric, N. (2010). Always-on Enterprise Information Systems for Business Continuance: Technologies for Reliable and Scalable Operations. USA: IGI Global Inc. TOGAF. (2011). Information Systems Architectures, Retrieved from http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap09.html Godinez, M., Eberhard, H., Klaus, K., Steve, L., Martin, O. & Michael, S. (2010). The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture: A Systems-Based Approach for Unlocking Business Insight.

USA: IBM Press.