Interoperability

Enterprises are today faced with a number of challenges related to interoperability. Interoperability is the ability for two or more systems (or organisations) to exchange information and to utilise the information in a meaningful way. Interoperability is not limited to technical integration challenges, it can also be addressed from an organisational point of view (e.g. restructuring or merger), where integration of business processes, workflows and different software systems are important.

Interoperability has four dimensions:

• Enterprise - business processes and its environments
• Knowledge - organisational roles, competence and skills
• ICT - technical aspects related to applications, data and communications
• Semantics - precise definitions and common understanding of the enterprise, knowledge and ICT

SINTEF has a long track record of research within these 4 dimensions and can address the complexity of interoperability challenges from different view points. We have developed frameworks and methods for enterprise architecture and ICT-architecture which address different aspects of interoperability.