Title: Global industrialisation of information-intensive services: a reference architecture for electronic business media

Authors: Christoph Schroth

Addresses: SAP Research CEC St. Gallen, University of St. Gallen, MCM Institute, Blumenbergplatz 9, St. Gallen 9000, Switzerland

Abstract: The relentless march of improvements in the cost-performance ratio of information technology today, facilitates the provision and consumption of Electronic Information-Intensive Services (EIIS) across company boundaries. However, existing products and services exhibit both managerial and technological weaknesses. Therefore, new concepts are required to facilitate a comprehensive industrialisation of cross-organisational EIIS. In this work, we present and thoroughly discuss a modular, service-oriented reference architecture for electronic business media which allows for realising |Lean| management and implementation of cross-organisational collaboration. Based on the IEEE Recommended Practice for Architectural Description, in combination with the St. Gallen Media Reference Model, this reference architecture provides four main views: community (structural organisation), process (process-oriented organisation), services and infrastructure. By applying this reference architecture to the case of public administration in Switzerland, we show its potential to realise a |Lean| organisation and implementation of cross-organisational electronic collaboration.

Keywords: cross-organisational collaboration; globalisation; internet services; web services; lean service management; service-oriented architectures; SOA; information-intensive services; e-services; online services; electronic business media; lean management; public administration; Switzerland; electronic collaboration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPLM.2008.021442

International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management, 2008 Vol.3 No.2/3, pp.191 - 210

Published online: 27 Nov 2008 *

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