Categories of Ontologies' Applications in the Realm of Enterprise Modeling

The field of enterprise modeling (EM) is facing a number of challenges. Some of them result out of the application of informal or semi-formal modeling languages having usually semantics similar to object-oriented programming languages. The EM community has recognized ontologies as a promising way to address some of the existing problems. There is, however, a striking lack of consensus about understanding of ontology in the Information Systems domain. The multiplicity of different understandings leads to an increased diversity of proposed approaches. To contribute to a better understanding of the role of ontologies in the realm of EM and of requirements they would need to meet, we distinguish and discuss different categories of applications of ontologies in the EM field. Based on their analysis, we identify the main benefits resulting out of the application of ontologies and point to the main challenges hampering their adoption. This allows to assess the maturity of this field and to identify directions of future research.