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International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol XXXV. Part B2. Istanbul 2004
9. Health of the GI service: This is the transient status of
the service at the time of discovery and composition
is executed.
QoS-aware discovery, composition and orchestration of a
GI service chain is necessary to build quality into the GI
business process where the process is made up of disparate
services operating under different policies and with vary-
ing non-functional quality characteristics. With quality as
an important competitive factor, providers will apply var-
ious strategies to enhance the quality and performance of
their services. Several strategies exist in literature, see for
example (Zeng et al., 2003, Shan et al., 2002, Menasce and
Almeida, 2000).
Further, while QoS-aware chaining of GI services does not
provide absolute guarantees on quality of services, its a
first and necessary step in that direction. Once an appro-
priate service chain has been composed, a fitting service
model can then be sought, where possible. Nonetheless,
the provision of absolute QoS guarantees demands a guar-
anteed service model in the Internet core and similar guar-
antees from the GI service providers.
5 INTEGRATING THE GI ENTERPRISE
GI providers have faced volatile markets in recent years
precipitated by technology advances, changing user needs,
increasing competition, abundance of data in distributed
databases and entrepreneurial government policies (Groot,
2001, Kure and Amer, 1992). As a result many strategies
have emerged to address market volatility over the years.
Modern methods of operations management found great
appeal in GI processing to enhance efficiency of business
processes and improve performance (Radwan et al., 2001).
As a result, business process re-engineering, total quality
management and continuous process improvement have all
gained popularity in the design, operation and management
of GI workflows (Cerco, 2000), with changes in legal and
institutional frameworks allowing for new business models
and cost recovery measures.
In an increasingly competitive and global GI marketplace
agility and collaboration become guiding principles. There
has been growing effort towards collaboration in the GI
marketplace over the years with outsourcing being the most
established (OS, 1996, Groot, 2001, Cerco, 2000). With
the advent of the Web, the geospatial data infrastructure
(GDI) emerged to make large volumes of spatial data held
in disparate, globally distributed systems, more broadly
accessible and sharable through the Web (Nerbert, 2000,
Groot and McLaughlin, 2000). Since its inception in the
1980s, many GDI initiatives exist, making distributed spa-
tial data resources accessible to growing to users (Masser,
1999),
The notion geographic information services infrastructure
takes the GDI a level higher to enable on-line access and
processing of spatial data. The GI service infrastructure
concept presumes that enterprises will embrace and exploit
215
- &
TS. expectations
namic mix of autonomous enterprises
Dynamic mix of collaborations
(Virtual Enterprises}
Figure 2: Virtual enterprize cycle
the technology to deliver services and achieve competitive
advantage. As the technology matures, the challenge is
on GI enterprises to evolve and leverage the technology to
be competitive and relevant in an increasingly volatile and
global marketplace.
Experiences from the manufacturing and service sectors
show that integration is a basic prerequisite for the agile
enterprise. Williams and Li (1998) define enterprise inte-
gration as the coordinated operation of all elements of the
enterprise working together towards optimal fulfilment of
the enterprise mission. Integration is necessary for flexible
structures and business processes (Vernadat, 1996), which
allow the enterprise to rapidly reconfigure and enter collab-
orations with other enterprises in common value networks.
Within the enterprise, integration breaks down the rigid
walls of hierarchical management structures through free
but controlled flow of information resulting in decentralised
decision making and evolution of core competencies.
At the inter-enterprise level, developments are centered on
the virtual enterprise (VE). The VE is a temporary alliance
of autonomous enterprises collaborating in a common prod-
uct cycle and sharing resources, skills and costs to address
a business opportunity while meeting corporate strategy
(Franke, 2002). In a virtual enterprise, disparate enter-
prises coalesce to share core competencies and satisfy a
market need, while presenting themselves in the market as
one entity.
Figure 2 shows the evolution cycle of a virtual enterprise.
The figure indicates that integration allows enterprises. to
develop core competencies by leveraging ICT. To satisfy a
market opportunity, enterprises dynamically discover each
other, negotiate innovative business propositions and col-
laborate in common value chains, in which each party par-
ticipates with its core competencies, to deliver the required
product or service. If the opportunity persists, the collabo-
ration can yield a new enterprise. The VE presents an ideal
model for designing, developing and operating highly in-
tegrated GI enterprises.
Several standard methodologies and reference architectures
exist for enterprise integration. Basically, they outline the
enterprise development process, its phases and the main
