Seriously addressing the software proliferation problem results in a sound software and information unification strategy.

Software unification is geared at the development of an infrastructure that allows for the representation of structure and behavior of all kinds of business artifacts, including business processes, ranging from unstructured to highly structured processes, business rules, business services, business documents, ranging from unstructured to highly structured documents, person roles, etc. To cater for the integration of existing software systems, such as ERP software, the infrastructure would also need to support bi-directional real-time interaction through technologies, such as web services. In addition, import and export functionality provides for information exchange.

Information unification addresses structure and content of all kinds of business artifacts and establishes common business semantics across all business artifacts, so that information is represented consistently throughout systems. Business artifacts can represent all three basic types of information:

• unstructured information, i.e. information that does not have a pre-defined data model, such as unstructured text
• semi-structured information, i.e. information that contains tags or other markers to separate semantic elements and enforce hierarchies of elements within the content, such as emails, contacts or calendars
• structured information, i.e. information that has a pre-defined data model and is structured into elements (fields), such as orders or invoices.

Software unification and information unification go together. The concept of business artifact is key in that it makes software and information unification possible. Unification is not reduced to visual unification as often seen in traditional software products, but is implemented at the very core. The ultimate result, is an integrated ecosystem. The focus on software and information unification based on business artifacts leads to a new category of software called "Dynamic Enterprise Management System".