A Conceptual Framework to Analyze Enterprise Business Solutions from a Software Architecture Perspective
This addresses the problem of architectural risk for organizations dealing with software vendors, but it is incremental as it builds on existing software architecture concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of customers lacking visibility into software architecture when dealing with vendors, which risks system obsolescence with new business needs, by proposing a framework that helps organizations build a comprehensive architectural view and reference model, validated through application to an organization in Saudi Arabia to generate an architectural design.
The architectural aspects of software systems are not always explicitly exposed to customers when a product is presented to them by software vendors. Therefore, customers might be put at a major risk if new emerging business needs come to light that require modification of some of the core business processes within their organizations. So they might need to replace their existing systems or re-architect old ones to comply with new architectural standards. This paper describes a proposed framework that helps organizations to build a comprehensive view of their system architecture prior to dealing with vendors. Consequently, every organization can have a reference model that facilitates negotiation and communication with software vendors. The paper applies the proposed framework to an organization in the region of Saudi Arabia to validate its applicability and generates an architectural design for their software systems.