Automation in Enterprise Systems Development

The construction of enterprise-scale systems can be expensive and time-consuming. Progress in infrastructure systems promises increased levels of automation in development, deployment and maintenance. Various vendors offer workflow and document management, collaboration tools, application server middleware and commercial off the shelf software (COTS) based rapid application development (RAD) technology. Conformance to standards enables increasing degrees of interoperation between these tools. While this may be true for generic infrastructure, this level of interoperation has yet to be achieved for the domain-specific development that is built upon such work. In this position paper, we identify several problems with domain-specific system interoperation, and discuss possible solutions for future research. We outline work towards domain-specific standardization that Telstra Research Laboratories is involved in, aimed at finding New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) solutions in the area of telecommunications.