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Today, business organizations compete in the global marketplace. To compete successfully, organizations pursue the status of the world‐class organization (WCO). A WCO is defined as the best in its class, or as good as its best global competitor, in providing most value to the customer. The strategic pillars that enable an organization to become a WCO must be supported by effective information systems. Conventional information systems development approaches are not necessarily relevant for WCOs. Presents new approaches to developing the information for world‐class organizations.

To compete successfully, organizations pursue the status of the world‐class organizations (WCO). A WCO is defined as the best in its class, or as good as its best global competitor, in providing most value to the customer. WCOs must be supported by effective information systems. Presents new approaches to developing the information architecture for world‐class organizations.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the role of knowledge architecture in an enterprise and to provide a model to architect enterprise knowledge based on the Zachman framework.

This is a conceptual article providing a knowledge architecture model for an organization based on the Zachman framework that discussed several perspectives from the knowledge management point of view and information technology. To confirm the validity of the model a questionnaire was designed, applied and then analyzed by some statistical methods.

The paper provides a conceptual knowledge architecture model that can be applied to Iranian organizations practically. The validity of this model is confirmed by polling the opinion of knowledge architecture experts.

The lack of resources directly related to the subject of the research, the novelty of this kind of research in Iran and the lack of organizations which perform a knowledge architecture model in reality are the restrictions of this research. The authors' suggestion for further research studies is to execute the model and survey from foreigner experts.

The paper may be beneficial for enterprise architects in the knowledge area.

The paper may be of high value to researchers in the knowledge management field and to practitioners involved with KM adoption in the organizations. It gives valuable information and guidelines that hopefully will help the leaders and the senior knowledge management managers to accomplish KM through their organization successfully.

There has been a lack of meaningful information systems architecture, which comprehensively conceptualise the essential components and functionality of an information system for fire emergency response addressing needs of different job roles. The purpose of this paper is to propose a comprehensive information systems architecture which would best support four of the key firefighter job roles.

The study has built on the outcomes of two previous preliminary studies on information and human-computer interaction needs of core firefighter job roles. Scenario-based action research was conducted with firefighters in a range of roles, to evaluate human-computer interaction needs while using various technology platforms.

Several key themes were identified and led us to propose several layers of an integrated architecture, their composition and interactions.

The selected fire scenarios may not represent every type of fire expected in high-risk built environments.

The current paper represents a shared discussion between end users, system architects and designers, to understand and improve essential components. It therefore provides a reference point for the development of information system architecture for fire emergency response.

The proposed information system architecture is novel because it outlines specific architectural elements required to meet the specific situation awareness needs of different firefighters job roles.

In an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred. As a trusted information provider, libraries are in an advantageous position to respond, but this requires integrated strategic and enterprise architecture planning, for information technology (IT) has evolved from a support role to a strategic role, providing the core management systems, communication networks and delivery channels of the modern library. Furthermore, IT components do not function in isolation from one another but are interdependent elements of distributed and multidimensional systems encompassing people, processes and technologies, which must consider social, economic, legal, organisational and ergonomic requirements and relationships, as well as being logically sound from a technical perspective. Strategic planning provides direction, while enterprise architecture strategically aligns and holistically integrates business and information system architectures. While challenging, such integrated planning should be regarded as an opportunity for the library to evolve as an enterprise in the digital age, or at minimum, to simply keep pace with societal change and alternative service providers. Without strategy, a library risks being directed by outside forces with independent motivations and inadequate understanding of its broader societal role. Without enterprise architecture, it risks technological disparity, redundancy and obsolescence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this conceptual chapter provides an integrated framework for strategic and architectural planning of digital library services. The concept of the library as an enterprise is also introduced.

The progress of parallel computing in Information Retrieval (IR) is reviewed. In particular we stress the importance of the motivation in using parallel computing for text retrieval. We analyse parallel IR systems using a classification defined by Rasmussen and describe some parallel IR systems. We give a description of the retrieval models used in parallel information processing. We describe areas of research which we believe are needed.

Drawing on established alignment and architectural theory, this paper seeks to present the argument that an organisation's enterprise architecture can enable the alignment of business strategy and information systems and technology (IS/IT).

The paper presents a detailed case study of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), where a high degree of alignment and international recognition of excellence in business and enabling IS/IT performance are documented.

The ABS enterprise architecture was developed in 1999‐2001 and describes the organisation's physical business and IS/IT elements, and the connective relationships that inform the alignment condition. The ABS architecture is robustly holistic in form, and is characterised by a strong and equal focus on business operations, the deliberate inclusion of an IS/IT governance framework, the structuring and hosting of corporate information for business delivery, and the efficient reuse of IS/IT components.

The ABS case study also examined empirically the social aspects and formal mechanisms of organisational alignment, and shows how a formal enterprise architecture mechanism can integrate into a successful alignment process.

Information architecture (IA) is often understood as a comprehensive master plan for organizational data assets and is widely considered as an essential component of broader enterprise architecture (EA). However, the status and practical operationalization of IA still remain largely unclear. In order to clarify these questions, this paper investigates what instruments related to IA are actually employed in organizations.

This study builds on the analysis of architecture practices in 27 diverse organizations. Based on the semi-structured interviews with architects and the examination of utilized architectural documents, we explore IA-related instruments with their usage scenarios that have been adopted in the studied organizations.

The authors identify 12 distinct instruments used in the industry and analyze in detail their features, properties and relationships. This paper analysis shows that these instruments are rather diverse and largely inconsistent across different organizations. The study findings also suggest that IA cannot be considered as a comprehensive plan for information, but rather as a variable set of loosely related instruments and practices that help organizations manage information.

The study offers a unique perspective on the concept of IA, as it is practiced in the industry today, as well as a critical scrutiny of the respective prescriptions abundant in the existing literature. Although this study does not attempt to theorize on the findings, it makes a significant empirical contribution by offering a solid evidence-based view of IA and its key instruments currently missing in the available literature.

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.

Today, most organisations are using packaged software for their key business processes. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, customer relationship management and electronic commerce systems enable organisations to improve their focus of using information systems to support their operational and financial goals. This article argues that the need to integrate these packaged software applications with each other as well as with existing or legacy business applications drives the need for a standardised integration architecture to more flexibly implement new business processes across different organisations and applications. To illustrate the components of such an architecture, a case study undertaken at the Robert Bosch Group provided necessary empirical evidence. The Robert Bosch Group has evaluated different enterprise application integration (EAI) systems to achieve a standardised integration architecture. The article describes a reference architecture and criteria for the classification of EAI systems which are derived from different integration approaches.