IDEONTM: An extensible ontology for designing, integrating, and managing collaborative distributed enterprises

Abstract

An organization's ability to achieve and sustain competitive advantage in the face of continual change depends, to a large extent, on the adaptability, interoperability, and maintainability of its enterprise management approach and supporting software implementation. In this regard, the major challenges facing organizations are: (a) achieving seamless integration of enterprise design, management and control processes and supporting applications; (b) ensuring interoperability between new and legacy business applications; and (c) adapting business strategies and ongoing operations to changes in the external and internal environments. The latter requires integrated planning and execution of enterprise processes. This paper presents IDEONTM, a unified, extensible enterprise ontology that has been designed in response to these needs. Two specific applications of IDEONTM are presented along with the specific extensions for each application. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Syst Eng 4: 35–48, 2001