Challenges and Opportunities of Enterprises Network Design and Services

Enterprise networks in terms of business partners cooperating to achieve common business objectives are challenged by communication and technical conditions. A usual way to manage these challenges is to look from a single enterprise perspective. If it is a large organisation it tries to force the partners to follow its strategy. In terms of small or medium size companies they try to follow standards or the requests of larger organisations. However, the investment to improve the business is located within single partners of the network. This raises the question of which technology and standard will be suitable in the future. The related technology changes can require high investments. The question arises which technology, standard, IT system, architecture, model should be used. The paper will discuss the use of enterprise models together with open source utilities to reduce the risk of loss of investments. Starting with the identification of requirements in the form of as-is models, the development of conceptual to-be models, the enrichment to implementation models and finally a realisation model that guides the implementation. In terms of a vision the paper will especially focus on the options for the software implementation and reduction of costs of change.