Interoperability strategies for business agility

In times of increasing uncertainty and turbulence in the business environment, the concept of agility has become a new guiding principle for the change and development of enterprises. Agile business requires agile information systems and this have consequences on how the systems should interoperate. This paper describes and analyzes the impact of information systems interoperability strategies on business agility. Three interoperability strategies are identified; unification, intersection and interlinking. Cases from Swedish Health Care are used to demonstrate the application of the strategies. The conclusion is that the choice of interoperability strategy has significant impact on business agility and should therefore be analyzed and evaluated carefully. If the wrong strategy is chosen, there is a considerable risk for misalignment and expensive consequences. The challenge is to create architectural solutions for interoperability that are in harmony with the demands of the business, both in a short term and a long term perspective.