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The pharmaceutical industry is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. For example, institutional regulations that have been in place for decades are being removed and competitive pressures force pharmaceutical companies to adopt customer‐oriented strategies. Information technology (IT) is a traditional enabler in this industry for the interaction with suppliers, wholesalers and pharmacies. This paper shows that internet portals yield new opportunities in accessing key customer segments, such as physicians and patients. The central message is that shaping these customer‐oriented systematic methodologies is merely a technological undertaking. Changes are required regarding strategy, processes as well as the systems architecture. To develop an integrated customer relationship management strategy this research draws on elements from established business redesign. The emphasis is on portals that bundle services for the patient's and physician's customer processes.

The paper pursues an action research approach where researchers have been involved in project work. The overall architecture framework has been generalized from projects with nine international companies between 2000 and 2002. One of these companies, the case of Pharma Corp., one of the largest pharma companies worldwide, is detailed in this paper. It shows how the three main architecture views strategy, process and system are used for the development of a customer‐oriented portal strategy.

Portals that support business processes have implications on the technical and business architecture alike. Existing architectures have an emphasis on individual architecture views, but rarely cover the “whole picture”. This paper argues that alignment is necessary of at least three architectures: the business architecture positions, the portal regarding the target customer segments and the (electronic) intermediaries. The process architecture identifies customer processes for each segment and derives portal services, which may also be sourced from external service providers. Thus, their configuration requires the alignment of all levels which are usually specified separately.

The architecture framework presents a first step towards a systematic methodology for re‐engineering customer relationships. It may support the project work in companies and stimulate future research towards inter‐organizational business process redesign.

This chapter considers how to ensure that both knowledge preservation and curation are well supported in the architecture and infrastructure of any organization. Support at the enterprise architecture is critical if the business goals of use, reuse, curation, and recuration in the business context are to be achieved. Enterprise architecture is explained – its vertical and horizontal approaches. Preservation is aligned with the information and data architecture. Curation is defined as a new element in the business architecture layer. The authors explain how this approach supports variations in practice across the organization.

Information architecture has gradually crept into prominence over the last few years as one of the new buzz words in Web design. This article examines the definition and history of information architecture.

Scant attention has been given to the role of enterprise architecture (EA) in relationship to risk management in information system development projects. Even less attention has been given to the inter‐organizational setting. The aim of this paper is to better understand this relationship.

The relationship between EA and project failure/success is investigated by – through a workshop – creating a retrospective view on the use of architectures in large and complex ICT‐projects.

Failure factors can be grouped in organization network, people, process, product and technology categories. The findings show that a disappointingly limited number of public sector development projects make sufficient use of architecture as a risk management instrument. Architectures should be considered both as a risk‐mitigating instrument and as an organizational shaping routine to reduce project failure and manage risk in organization networks.

A single workshop with a limited number of participants was conducted. The findings need further refinement and generalization based on more empirical research investigating the relationship between architecture and project failure.

Architecture should give explicit consideration to risk management and help to draw attention to this. Governance mechanisms need be defined to ensure that the organizations' members become aware of both architecture and risk management. Risk management and EA have similarities, as they are both an instrument and an organizational shaping routine.

Governments collaborate more and more in organizational networks and for that reason often multiple organizations are involved in information system project developments. Enterprise architecture as a risk mitigation instrument has not, to date, been given attention.

The explosion of standards building on the 1998 XML specification from the World Wide Web Consortium has been slow to reach academic and library information science applications. While part of this is certainly due to cost, argues that adequate attention to architectural design, when considering XML technology, can make new forms of information management possible. Provides a survey of tools and relevant technology for working in Z39.50 with XML and MARC records, based primarily on a major undertaking by the ATLA‐CERTR (American Theological Library Association – Center for Electronic Resources in Theology and Religion) group at Emory University with 50 years of 50 journals digitized from philosophy, ethics, and religion.

Most organisations, in spite of the attention and investment focused on ERP software, have a number of discrete computer systems that operate independently of one another. In addition to the problems of unmanageability, this results in an inability to fully exploit the information resources available. The concept of an information architecture, which draws on the architectural profession, is an attempt to focus discipline on the design and building of information systems, to facilitate prioritisation and decision making, in support of business strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an exploratory study of third-year architecture students’ information behaviour. It focusses on information activities, personal experience, resource usage, preferences in working individually or collaboratively, preferences for information resources inspiring creativity and physical spaces to be creative.

It was a mixed methods study with a strongly qualitative component and limited descriptive quantitative data. Data were collected in October 2016 at a South African university using individual self-administered questionnaires and semi-structured individual interviews; 19 out of 60 (response rate 32 per cent) third-year architecture students doing a design project participated.

Creativity is important in architecture projects, as is information resources in stimulating creativity. Students preferred to work individually during their design projects; at times collaboration was needed for idea generation. Information activities included: information gathering, encountering, use and sharing. A range of theoretical, technical, artistic and practical skills and knowledge must be integrated to produce creative outcomes, in addition, to information searching and information usage. Factual information is also required. Students can benefit from a supportive information rich creative space (physical or virtual).

The study was conducted at only one institution with a small number of participants. Although generalisation of findings is not possible, issues for further research can be noted.

Designers of physical and virtual creative spaces must take into account different facets of information behaviour and the information resources and services required during creative information-seeking activities.

Although there is literature on information behaviour and creativity, the authors could not find any that explores architecture students’ information behaviour in academic spaces of creativity.

E‐business information systems are computer applications that leverage intra‐ and inter‐firm process and systems integration. Considering the growth and strategic importance of e‐business, while it is important for organizations to carefully plan for and architect e‐business systems, none of the existing information systems planning models is adequate for the task. An e‐business architecture planning model is developed by identifying 12 generic e‐business models and three axes on which drivers of the information architecture needs of e‐business firms fall. Sowa and Zachman’s information architecture is augmented to further facilitate e‐business information systems architecture planning.

For many companies the use of information technology starts with the purchase of hardware such as mainframes, PCs and networks. In these cases the use of IT is based on the opportunities of technology. These companies often find it hard to indicate to what extent the specific resources and systems contribute to their business and their market position. In such a case, IT is, above all, regarded as an item of expense. On the other hand more and more organizations have become aware of the possibilities offered by IT to achieve competitive advantage. This strategic use of IT requires, first of all, a distinct business strategy that indicates what the organization is aiming at in terms of customers, suppliers, competitors, shareholders and authorities, and what role IT is playing in all this. On the basis of the business strategy, the specific use of IT can be established, in terms of an architecture and an infrastructure. As a result, a company is able to indicate where and how IT supports the business and the market position. If IT is applied in this way, it will not only be an item of expense, but also a production factor which is integrated into the strategic planning of a company. Describes a method to solidify the business strategy and to shape the resulting architecture and infrastructure in such a way that IT can offer an active contribution. This method has been applied worldwide, many times, at leading medium‐sized to very large, profit and non‐profit organizations.

The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive literature review on the utilisation of intelligent agent technology in the library environment.

Research papers since 1990 on the use of various intelligent agent technologies in libraries are divided into two main application areas: digital library (DL), including agent‐based DL projects, multi‐agent architecture for DLs, intelligent agents for distributed heterogeneous information retrieval and agent support to information search process in DLs; and services in traditional libraries, including user interface for library information systems, automatic reference services and multi‐agent architecture for library services. For each paper on the topic, its new ideas or models, referred work, analyses, experiments, findings and conclusions are addressed.

The majority of the literature covers DLs and there have been fewer studies about services in traditional libraries. A variety of architecture, framework and models integrating agent technology in library systems or services are proposed, but only a few have been implemented in the practical environment. The application of agent technology is still at the research and experimentation stage. Agent technology has great potential in many areas in the library context; however it presents challenges to libraries that want to be involved in its adoption.

The survey has practical implications for libraries, librarians and computer professionals in developing projects that employ intelligent agent technology to meet end‐users' expectations as well as to improve information services within limited resources in library settings.

The paper provides a comprehensive survey on the development and research of intelligent agents in libraries in literature.