Extending trust in enterprise systems

As technology evolves, the border of embedded system and enterprise system is gradually meaningless. ESB is a well-known middleware for integration of enterprise services and systems, and DDS is a promising real-time communication middleware for embedded systems. This paper introduces structurally integrated architecture between DDS middleware and ESB middleware for interconnection between real-time embedded systems and enterprise information systems. An integrated architecture of DDS and ESB allows integration of embedded system environment and enterprise system environment. It supports integration of diverse embedded devices from ubiquitous systems with real-time communication and allows effective data processing using enterprise services, which are generated from embedded systems. We design DDS binding component for ESB to allow DDS communication to enterprise services. This DDS-ESB integration architecture could be applied in the field that generates huge of data for monitoring and processes data for providing user services in real-time, such as u-City or home network.

This paper proposes an agent-based enterprise information architecture called AbEIA to the handle technical and organizational problems faced by current enterprise information systems (EISs). AbEIA is composed of an information infrastructure layer, business process layer and a user interface layer. Seven types of agent are used in the new architecture to facilitate setting up information systems in enterprises. We also demonstrate how AbEIA is applied to the EIS of 3PL.

In the past decade, many enterprise information systems (EIS) have been developed with enormous resources, such as a dedicated server per application (http, email, DNS, File, SMS, backup, etc). Thus, the overall utilization of EIS is low in compared with its resources, especially the servers. In this paper, we present a practical way to increase the utilization of EIS by consolidating many of the applications into a few servers; therefore, the power and maintenance costs for EIS are reduced. An EIS comprises of a set of servers, where each server acts as a root of a minimum spanning tree (MST) connecting a number of clusters. Each cluster consists of a set of clients. All the servers within EIS are connected by a high-level MST. We aim at improving the servers' utilization by removing the underutilized servers and reconstructing MST by rerouting its corresponding clusters to remaining servers through. The proposed consolidation technique explores to increase the utilization of remaining servers through consolidation, while maintaining an acceptable performance of remaining servers. We have performed experiments on a medium-scale EIS by reducing 25% of its existing servers having lowest workloads, and reconstructed MSTs. The experimental results demonstrate a better trade-off in improving the average utilization of remaining servers by 13% through servers consolidation.

Business Process Management is one of the most important components of a process-driven organization that we perceive as a sum of processes that are more or less follow-up. By adjusting and managing these processes, we can greatly influence the organization's performance, efficiency, flexibility and competitiveness. Business Process Management is important to support the technical infrastructure of modern information systems and communication technologies. These systems are part of the overall enterprise information system. The following article focuses on information and communication technologies for the proper and efficient functioning of process management in agro sectoral companies. This article presents a summary of theoretical knowledge and practical recommendations for creating and maintaining a process management system in enterprises with the support of information and communication technologies. For a more detailed analysis of this issue, statistical research, the partial results of which are subjected to statistical testing, are presented in the following article.

Information system of motor transport enterprise is one of the most important components of its activity. The perfection of this system strongly affects the efficiency of the enterprise. The purpose of the article is to develop proposals for improving the existing information system taking into account the characteristics of the enterprise. To achieve the objectives of the article, the following methods were used: information on approaches to defining the concept of information system was analyzed and synthesized, the existing approaches to the design of information systems were sassessed. Using a logical approach, the components of the information-logical model of the “Travel Letter” database were identified. The study also widely used the methods of comparative analysis, graphical method and the method of operagrams to study the document flow of the enterprise. In the article the information system of the motor transport enterprise which, unlike existing ones, takes into account current condition of the information flows, which provide effective management of the enterprise and optimizes the routes of document movement was further developed. The proposed improvements will allow MTE to achieve their goals more systematically, increase the speed of information flows, ensure their quality and efficiency. The obtained results, which include the development of an improved information system of the enterprise, allow to carry out further research on the document flow of all divisions and services of MTE and to develop their improved information systems on the basis of research results.

The development of science and technology has brought a wealth of information resources to enterprises. The ability of enterprises to acquire, process and apply such information is called “enterprise information capability”, and it has become an important evaluation standard for enterprises which are market-oriented. At present, the research achievements of enterprise information capability evaluation and enterprise information system construction evaluation mainly include the connotation of enterprise information capability, how to improve enterprise information capability construction and how to construct enterprise information system, etc. This paper attempts to use the fuzzy inference system to evaluate the enterprise information capability, and validates the constructed fuzzy inference system through simulation data. Finally, it obtains a good evaluation result. The results show that the higher the achievement rate of each indicator, the higher the score calculated by the fuzzy inference system, and the stronger the information capability of the enterprise. At the same time, the fuzzy inference system method can be used for the evaluation of enterprise information capabilities.

Building their companies into successful e-businesses has become an important objective for today’s enterprises. Conceptually, it embodies the enabling of the business with such capabilities as global networking, streamlining business processes, sharing information, agility in responding to the market, and intelligent decision making. But how can these concepts be implemented in actual enterprises? Why do these desirable attributes of business systems suddenly become the definition of competency of companies large and small? This paper describes the framework for building an e-business from the enterprise information systems’ perspective. Increasingly enterprise systems have extended beyond the traditional business functions and include such new features as supply-chain management, customer relationship management and electronic commerce. The shifting focus is driven by the adoption of the Web as a new channel for product distribution, marketing, and interacting with customers. The integration of the traditional as well as the Web-oriented functions is the cornerstone for a successful e-business. This paper presents a framework for e-businesses that on one hand build on the enterprise systems but on the other hand encompasses the new e-business dimensions.

In this article the tool for software integrity control is introduced. With its help the risk of violation of enterprise's information system's software integrity can be reduced. The tool implements the algorithm of integrity control based on the Russian standard of hashing function “GOST R 34.11-2012”. The functionality of developed tool allows to create the initial state of the enterprise's information system by obtaining a set of hash values for each program. These values are saved in the database of initial hashes. The tool carries out periodic integrity check, firstly by calculating the current hash values for software based on the algorithm of the hashing function “GOST R 34.11-2012”, and then by comparing the current hash values with the initial ones. If modification of the program is authorized, its hash value is modified. The tool provides report of the performed software integrity check. The experimental studies are carried out. To confirm the functionality of developed tool, the malware “12Trojan.Win32.Krepper.ab” is modeled. It is shown that the use of the developed tool reduces information security risk by 5%.

Because the architecture of an enterprise information system determines relations of its individual parts with its surrounding environment, an effective use of an information system (IS) requires, apart from other things, its painless integration into the enterprise management system. The IS architecture can be seen by different angles. The focus of this paper is in particular on the application architecture of an IS. The reason for analyzing organizational structure modeling approaches and IS architecture is to eliminate common semantic gaps between the languages used by IS users and designers. The architectural design of enterprise IS might be tightly interconnected with enterprise organizational architecture. However, in reality, architectural models of enterprise IS are not fairly understandable for users. For both of these architectural models the orientation on processes often is a joint base. Thus, process approach can prospectively bridge existing gaps between enterprise organizational models and IS architectures. In coherence with that goal the paper presents methodological aspects of how cross-organizational process support can be effectively used for designing the first stage of information system.

The success of implementing Enterprise Information System (EIS) depends on exploring and improving the EIS software, and EIS software training. However, the synthesis of the EIS implementation approach has not been investigated. In this chapter, the authors propose an integrated research and training approach for students and employees about enterprise information systems (EIS) that are encountered in an organization. Our integrated approach follows the different stages of a typical EIS project from inception to completion. These stages, as identified, are modeling, planning, simulation, transaction, integration, and control. This ensures that an employee who is trained by this plan has an acquaintance with the typical information systems in an organization. Further, for training and research purposes the authors developed prototype information systems that emulate the ones usually found in organizations. This ensures the EIS software logic is consistent with the business logic. This chapter also discuss some of the case studies conducted with the prototype systems.

The continuous modification of business processes finally result in a situation where several software systems have to collaborate in a way that was never anticipated in their original design. The emerging technologies and standards drive enterprises into modernising their stand-alone legacy assets and leveraging them into an integrated platform for interoperation. At the same time, enterprises are under tremendous pressure to evolve their existing systems to better respond to marketplace needs and rapidly changing technologies. This constant pressure to evolve is driven by escalating expectations of the customer for new enterprise standards, new products and system features, and improved performance. With emerging standards which simplify the interoperation in enterprise information infrastructure, an Enterprise Integration (EI) architecture is described in this paper. The dependability requirement is discussed to prevent architectural mismatches and avoid the standard conflict in the architecture. Based on the integrated architecture, the approach of legacy reusing is explored in order to leverage and reuse legacies.

Enterprise information systems consist of interrelated intranet-based and Internet-based applications, thus the Web platform serves well as the middleware for their development. Even though, in many cases, discrete applications operate efficiently, the overall system performance is less than expected. A potential cause is that, configuration issues although interrelated are solved in isolation. The architecture and performance characteristics of the underlying network affect application configuration. Thus, the symbiotic relationship between application and network architecture must also be explored. We argue that, in order to effectively configuring and evaluating enterprise information systems, network infrastructure restrictions must be incorporated within application configuration process and vice versa. An effective four-stage methodology is proposed for this purpose. It is important to note the significance of a consistent model for the representation of system entities throughout all stages. UML-like notation is used for system representation. Alternative views of the system emphasizing specific configuration stages are offered through UML package representation. Since the modelling scheme is extendable, the adaptation of UML constructs simplifies the process of extending or customizing the model. A case study where the proposed methodology is used for the configuration a large-scale medical information system and the experience obtained are also presented.

Significant changes in information technology (IT), the Internet, and e-business technology have increased the need for continuous and agile data access, in particular for mission-critical applications. Modern business computing has evolved into an organizational engine that drives business and provides a powerful source for competitive advantage. IT has been integrated into organizational operations and activities in a way that application downtime is not an option since each hour, even minute of downtime may generate negative financial effects. In order to achieve higher levels of competitiveness, business has to be continuous from data availability perspective and agile with regard to data access. An enterprise information system (EIS) can be qualified as “high-quality” in terms of its architecture, application platform, and information it can provide to users but if that information is unavailable when it is needed by customer, manager, or any other end user, the value of that EIS simply becomes “zeroed” from end-users’ point of view. The chapter presents a framework for implementation of continuous computing technologies for improving business continuity. The framework is presented within a systemic view of developing an “always-on” enterprise information system.

This paper makes a comparative analysis of SaaS's relative merits from the aspects of cost, solution, software maintenance, network application and security. SaaS not only possesses the advantages of low upfront investment, flexible customization, rapid implementation and professional services but also has some disadvantages, such as higher long-term rent, lack of personalized solutions, network instability and data security. On the basis of the analysis above, it summarizes all kinds of constraints which enterprise information systems suitable to SaaS should follow, including industry standardization, business complexity, system performance and security requirement. Then, a fitness evaluation model is established. The model evaluates enterprise information systems from three aspects: enterprise resource, system features and SaaS service. At last, the paper makes some comments on the evaluation results and estimates whether SaaS is suitable for the information system evaluated.

GIS in business is catching on. As it increases its office use and receives wide recognition of its potential, even field workers want to use it out of office. On the other hand, some companies have introduced mobile computing technique to their enterprise information system thanks to the development of mobile terminals and mobile telecommunication infrastructure. There are, however, several restrictions and difficulties to integrate these techniques into a mobile GIS, mostly due to the characteristics of GIS and the immaturity of mobile computing environment.This paper explains one solution to overcome these difficulties and develop a mobile mapping system already in practical use. The new method makes use of CD-ROM and mobile phone. Furthermore, this paper discusses how to expand and incorporate mobile GIS into enterprise information system with an example of location system utilizing GPS.