6.2.2 Systems Engineering Model for Integrability (SEMI): A Three Step Process for the Continuous Development of Highly Integrated Enterprise Applications*

Stovepipe analytic applications are the norm for the complex organizations involved in product design, law enforcement, and government. However, to be effective, these analytic applications must now rely on services provided by other organizations, exchange data with those organizations, and standardize on components defined by multiple integration architectures. Stovepipes are no longer adequate. There is a bewildering array of technologies for developing integrated applications. Alternatives range from procedure libraries and relational databases to object-oriented databases and service-oriented architectures. Design decisions can have order-of-magnitude impact on performance, integrability, and maintainability. SEMI is a three-step process for structuring the decision making involved in the continuous development of integrated applications. The first step in SEMI is modeling the integration architectures; the second step is assessing the level of integration, and the third step is an integrated decision model.