Towards an Enterprise Interoperability Framework

This paper presents relevant interoperability approaches and solutions applied to global/international networked (collaborative) enterprises or organisations and conceptualise an enhanced enterprise interoperability framework. The paper covers several key aspects including how holistic approaches of architecting principles, standards and semantics contribute to the development of an interoperability framework that can be flexibly used for interoperable complex systems, particularly ICT, that support global enterprises including organisations from multiple countries, e.g. European and African organisations. This proposed comprehensive approach of interoperability covers not only technical aspects, but also semantics alongside organisational and cultural aspects. The use of systems engineering thinking and architecting for achieving interoperability of complex systems is suggested.