Ontology-Supported Enterprise Architecture Analysis

Abstract

Today, processing integrated information within and between enterprises is increasingly becoming more and more critical, and so is the implementation and evaluation of an Enterprise Architecture (EA). The review of literature on EA evaluation shows several issues. However, the evaluation of EAs has not attracted sufficient attention, and thus, this research area has not been explored thoroughly yet. We believe that in order to ensure consistency, interoperability and computational inferences among EAs, a complete and holistic approach, rather than monolithic, should be developed. Therefore, in this study, we propose an ontology-supported process model for the evaluation of EAs, and present the implementation details. The main contributions of the present study are the improvements realized in the expressiveness, extensibility, and computable power of EAs, and their evaluation techniques. Although the proposed model requires gathering empirical evidences and investigating applications in concrete cases, the first implications of the proposed model indicates its validity and feasibility, and, hence, the initial results are promising for continuing future studies.