Systematisation of Interoperability Body of Knowledge: the foundation for Enterprise Interoperability as a science

Abstract

The recently posed challenge of developing an Enterprise Interoperability Science Foundation (EISF) prompted some academic agents to attempt a systematisation of the Interoperability Body of Knowledge (IBoK). Still in their embryonic stages, these efforts have sought to organise and aggregate information from very fragmented and disparate sources, and with different granularities of detail, distinct epistemology origins, separate academic fields, etc. This paper aims to distinguish between levels of specificity of the Interoperability academic work, which are often confused, by considering Models, Theories, and Frameworks. The paper revises these concepts within the context of the EISF's recent work. The results presented here, reflecting consultation with the expert community, provide the synthesis of the current state of play regarding the work developed by the Enterprise Interoperability (EI) at the European Commission's Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) cluster.