Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
The set of arrangements through which a company records, files and finds again what it does: databases, applications, pages, forms, tickets, workflows, rights and statuses.
Full definition
In the established sense in enterprise computing, the term covers all the means — hardware, software, procedures, people — that process the organization's information. In ordinary usage within teams, it has narrowed to the application estate: "the IS" means the tools and the databases.
In the articles on this blog, the word keeps that narrow sense and adds a characterization: the information system is what is organized around applications, each holding its business objects within its own boundaries. It is that organization which is examined, and whose centre of gravity is said to be shifting.
Two usages then coexist in the same sentences, and they must be kept apart: the information system as it exists — an estate of applications — and what will be expected of it tomorrow, which no longer has the shape of an estate but of a network of contexts. Saying "the information system isn't going away" bears on the first; saying "its shape is changing" bears on the passage from one to the other.
Usage in the field
Used to designate the existing arrangement against which an organization by contexts is described, and to situate what, in that arrangement, remains necessary — business objects, rights, workflows, statuses.
Synonyms and variants
"IS" in speech and in headings; "the application estate" when the emphasis falls on the tools rather than on the information.
Not to be confused with
- Active memory — organizational memory that keeps, alongside the facts, what they taught. The information system holds the object, active memory holds what surrounds it.
- Context — a durable workspace gathering, around a goal, sources, notes, decisions and drafts. The context is defined by a goal, the information system by its applications.
- knowledge base — a documentary corpus built to be consulted. It is one of an information system's arrangements, and it shares its filing logic.
Examples
A ticket with its customer, its date, its status and its assignee: the information system keeps perfect track of it, and that is exactly what is asked of it.
Ambiguities / debates
The term is used sometimes for all the means of processing information, sometimes for the application estate alone, sometimes as the name of tomorrow's infrastructure — three different reaches in one conversation. That is the reason this entry exists.