Communication and Enterprise Architecture in Extended Enterprise Integration

Business-to-Business integration (B2Bi) is considered to be not merely an IT-issue, but also a business problem. This paper draws attention to the two communication gaps companies within an Extended Enterprise are confronted with when integrating their systems. To overcome these communication problems we propose the use of Enterprise Architecture descriptions. Therefore we give a bird’s-eye view of what Enterprise Architecture descriptions could look like in the context of the Extended Enterprise, as well as the compelling advantages that can be gained from using such descriptions in integration exercises. This paper is no how-to guide for Extended Enterprise Architecture but is meant to show the importance of Enterprise Architecture descriptions in this realm, something that is heartrendingly neglected.