Achieving a sustainable interoperability of standards

Agile enterprises and networks are required to continuously evolve so as to adequately respond to a dynamic, global and very competitive business environment. Unfortunately, this continuous change requirement affects the capacity of the enterprise to effectively interoperate internally and externally. Adding to this problem, the standards typically used as pillars for enterprise and network management and (inter)operation are themselves subject to continuous change and often bring their own interoperability, inconsistency and overlap problems. It is essential that such concerns are identified and addressed in a sustainable manner, i.e. taking into account the life cycles of all entities involved as their interoperability capabilities and requirements change along their lives. This paper focuses on interoperability issues specific to standards and proposes a novel and original way forward based on principles tested in previous case studies combining elements from the Enterprise Interoperability, Architecture and Integration, Collaborative Networks and Artificial Intelligence bodies of knowledge.