The Software Continuum Concept: Towards a Biologically Inspired Model for Robust E-Business Software Automation

This paper introduces a new concept, the software continuum concept based on the observation that exists a general parallelism between the software continuum from bits to business/Internet ecosystems and the natural continuum from particles to ecosystems. The general parallelism suggests that homeomorphisms may be identified and therefore some concepts, processes, and/or mechanisms in one continuum can be investigated for application in the other continuum. We argue that the homeomorphisms give rise to a biologically-inspired architectural framework for addressing robust control, robust intelligence, and robust autonomy issues in e-business software and other business-IT integration challenges. As application, we examine the mapping of a major enterprise-level architecture framework to the biologically-inspired framework. Design considerations for robust intelligence and autonomy in large-scale software automation and some major systemic features for flexible business-IT integration are also discussed.