Combining behavioural types with security analysis

Today's software systems are highly distributed and interconnected, and they increasingly rely on communication to achieve their goals; due to their societal importance, security and trustworthiness are crucial aspects for the correctness of these systems. Behavioural types, which extend data types by describing also the structured behaviour of programs, are a widely studied approach to the enforcement of correctness properties in communicating systems. This paper offers a unified overview of proposals based on behavioural types which are aimed at the analysis of security properties

Web Services Support for Dynamic Business Process Outsourcing

Outsourcing of business processes is crucial for organizations to be effective, efficient and flexible. To meet fast-changing market conditions, dynamic outsourcing is required, in which business relationships are established and enacted on-the-fly in an adaptive, fine-grained way unrestricted by geographic distance. This requires automated means for both the establishment of outsourcing relationships and for the enactment of services performed in these relationships over electronic channels. Due to wide industry support and the underlying model of loose coupling of services, Web services increasingly become the mechanism of choice to connect organizations across organizational boundaries. This paper analyzes to which extent Web services support the dynamic process outsourcing paradigm. We discuss contract -based dynamic business process outsourcing to define requirements and then introduce the Web services framework. Based on this, we investigate the match between the two. We observe that the Web services framework requires further support for cross - organizational business processes and mechanisms for contracting, QoS management and process-based transaction support and suggest ways to fill those gaps

Privacy Management Service Contracts as a New Business Opportunity for Operators

Recognizing the importance of privacy management as a business process and a business support process, this paper proposes the use of service level agreements (SLA’s) around privacy features, including qualitative and quantitative ones. Privacy metrics are defined by both parties with boundary values on each qualitative or qualitative feature. Their distribution is relying on stress distributions used in this field. The use of service level agreements also casts privacy management into a business perspective with benefits and costs to either party in a process. This approach is especially relevant for communications operators as brokers between content owners (individuals, businesses) and enterprise applications; in this context, the privacy SLA management would be carried out by the operator, while the terms and conditions of the SLA negotiation reside with the two external parties. This work was carried out as part of the large EU project PRIME www.prime.project.eu.org. on privacy enhancing technologies.Content Owners;Enterprise Business Processes;Managed Service Contracts;Privacy Agreements;Service Level Agreements (SLA's);Telecommunications Operators

Proactive SLA negotiation for service based systems: Initial implementation and evaluation experience

This paper describes a framework that we have developed to integrate proactive SLA negotiation with dynamic service discovery to provide cohesive runtime support for both these activities. The proactive negotiation of SLAs as part of service discovery is necessary for reducing the extent of interruptions during the operation of a service based system when the need for replacing services in it arises. The developed framework discovers alternative candidate constituent services for a service client application, and negotiates/agrees but does not activate SLAs with these services until the need for using a service becomes necessary. A prototype tool has been implemented to realize the framework. This prototype is discussed in the paper along with the results of the initial evaluation of the framework

Innovation for a circular economy : exploring the adoption of PSS by UK companies in the baby products sector

Several authors have commented on the relatively slow rate at which Product Service Systems (PSS) have been adopted in B2B networks. Despite some prominent examples, such as the provision of integrated lighting systems to Sainsbury’s (supermarket chain) by Parkersell in the UK, and the ‘pay per copy’ (lease and take back) systems provided by copier companies such as Xerox and Canon, PSS has not been widely adopted even though the business case seems sound. Consequently, the question of identifying and overcoming barriers to PSS adoption has become an important research topic. In this study we explore barriers to the adoption of PSS in the UK baby products industry using a qualitative research design employing in-depth interviews with baby products suppliers (manufacturers) and buyers (retailers). The novelty of the approach adopted in this study is that key concepts from the Industrial Networks Approach are used to frame the analysis. Buyers and suppliers of baby products acknowledge the value of the PSS approach, but PSS adoption is found to require considerable adaptation to conventional patterns of inter-organizational interaction

Managing Intellectual Property to Foster Agricultural Development

Over the past decades, consideration of IPRs has become increasingly important in many areas of agricultural development, including foreign direct investment, technology transfer, trade, investment in innovation, access to genetic resources, and the protection of traditional knowledge. The widening role of IPRs in governing the ownership of—and access to—innovation, information, and knowledge makes them particularly critical in ensuring that developing countries benefit from the introduction of new technologies that could radically alter the welfare of the poor. Failing to improve IPR policies and practices to support the needs of developing countries will eliminate significant development opportunities. The discussion in this note moves away from policy prescriptions to focus on investments to improve how IPRs are used in practice in agricultural development. These investments must be seen as complementary to other investments in agricultural development. IPRs are woven into the context of innovation and R&D. They can enable entrepreneurship and allow the leveraging of private resources for resolving the problems of poverty. Conversely, IPRs issues can delay important scientific advancements, deter investment in products for the poor, and impose crippling transaction costs on organizations if the wrong tools are used or tools are badly applied. The central benefit of pursuing the investments outlined in this note is to build into the system a more robust capacity for strategic and flexible use of IPRs tailored to development goals

Digital innovation in the Belgian insurance market

The insurance industry is changing, due to technology, market, and regulatory factors. Insurance products, processes, and business models are reshaped by rapid technological advances in big data, cloud computing, and Internet of Things. At the same time, consumers have become accustomed to the convenience, personalization, simplicity, and speed of interacting digitally via social media services and mobile applications offered by players such as Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google and Uber. As a result, consumers increasingly expect insurance companies to offer digital services with compelling user interfaces and experiences. As to regulation, the financial services industry is preparing for the implementation of the General Data protection Regulation (GDPR; Effective in May 2018), which gives consumers the right to request their personal data to be made portable or completely and securily deleted. In response, leading insurance companies have started deploying an ecosystem perspective, partnering with firms in and out-side the insurance industry.Accen

Mode-agnostic mobility contracts: identifying broker/aggregator models for delivering mobility as a service (MaaS)

Mobility as a service (MaaS) promises a bold new future where bundled public transport and shared mobility options will provide consumers with seamless mobility on par with and exceeding that of private vehicle ownership. Whilst there is a growing body of work examining the market and end user demand for MaaS, there remains a limited understanding of the supply-side around new business models for delivering these integrated mobility services. Mobility broker/aggregator models have been proposed, but to date there exists no quantitative evidence to empirically test the conditions around which interested businesses might invest or supply in this new entrepreneurial model. In this paper, we propose the idea of mode-agnostic mobility contracts as the interface for bringing together specialised businesses as part of the new MaaS ecosystem. We identify the relevant attributes and attribute levels defining these contracts through an extensive interview and participatory research program with key stakeholders including MaaS operators, conventional transport operators, public transport authorities and consultancies, with a focus in the Nordic countries where such schemes are presently well advanced. These mobility contracts were then incorporated as part of a stated choice survey, and we document the face-to-face pilot used to finesse the survey instrument prior to the main survey. A preliminary mixed logit choice model based on collected data (n=202) is presented to showcase the potential of our stated preference survey to reveal what the market is willing to deliver in terms of MaaS and how the future service delivery ecosystem might look

The relationship among development skills, design quality, and centrality in open source projects

The paradigm of the Internet of Services envisions trade on a global service-enabled internet. Companies, which participate in this new world of services, face the challenges of changing market conditions, new competitive threats, and new legal regulations. Service-oriented Architectures (SOA) provide a promising way to address some of these challenges at the level of the company’s IT infrastructure. In order to guideline an enterprise’s organization and IT and ensure smooth operations, governance frameworks have been established. More specifically, IT Governance and recently SOA Governance have been introduced. The basic structure of IT Governance frameworks is applicable to an SOA. However, they lack functionality or applicability concerning SOA-specific challenges. Current approaches, which focus on mere SOA Governance, lack framework scope and are mostly driven by individual companies. This issue aggravates taking into account the shift to an Internet of Services. We identify key issues and provide initial insights on building blocks for a Service Governance Framework which enables operations for companies in a moderated service network. We discuss service life cycle phases, stakeholder roles, and management processes taking into consideration existing frameworks such as ITIL and CObIT as well as industry-specific approaches from companies such as SAP, Oracle, and HP