Minitrack: Collaboration support for Joint Modeling and Simulation

Technology, Policy and Managemen

Intelligent Business Process Optimization for the Service Industry

The company\u27s sustainable competitive advantage derives from its capacity to create value for customers and to adapt the operational practices to changing situations. Business processes are the heart of each company. Therefore process excellence has become a key issue. This book introduces a novel approach focusing on the autonomous optimization of business processes by applying sophisticated machine learning techniques such as Relational Reinforcement Learning and Particle Swarm Optimization

UML-SOA-Sec and Saleem's MDS Services Composition Framework for Secure Business Process Modelling of Services Oriented Applications

In Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment, a software application is a composition of services, which are scattered across enterprises and architectures. Security plays a vital role during the design, development and operation of SOA applications. However, analysis of today's software development approaches reveals that the engineering of security into the system design is often neglected. Security is incorporated in an ad-hoc manner or integrated during the applications development phase or administration phase or out sourced. SOA security is cross-domain and all of the required information is not available at downstream phases. The post-hoc, low-level integration of security has a negative impact on the resulting SOA applications. General purpose modeling languages like Unified Modeling Language (UML) are used for designing the software system; however, these languages lack the knowledge of the specific domain and "security" is one of the essential domains. A Domain Specific Language (DSL), named the "UML-SOA-Sec" is proposed to facilitate the modeling of security objectives along the business process modeling of SOA applications. Furthermore, Saleem's MDS (Model Driven Security) services composition framework is proposed for the development of a secure web service composition

UML-SOA-Sec and Saleem’s MDS Services Composition Framework for Secure Business Process Modelling of Services Oriented Applications

In Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment, a software application is a composition of services, which are scattered across enterprises and architectures. Security plays a vital role during the design, development and operation of SOA applications. However, analysis of today’s software development approaches reveals that the engineering of security into the system design is often neglected. Security is incorporated in an ad-hoc manner or integrated during the applications development phase or administration phase or out sourced. SOA security is cross-domain and all of the required information is not available at downstream phases. The post-hoc, low-level integration of security has a negative impact on the resulting SOA applications. General purpose modeling languages like Unified Modeling Language (UML) are used for designing the software system; however, these languages lack the knowledge of the specific domain and “security” is one of the essential domains. A Domain Specific Language (DSL), named the “UML-SOA-Sec” is proposed to facilitate the modeling of security objectives along the business process modeling of SOA applications. Furthermore, Saleem’s MDS (Model Driven Security) services composition framework is proposed for the development of a secure web service composition

Intelligent Business Process Optimization for the Service Industry

The company's sustainable competitive advantage derives from its capacity to create value for customers and to adapt the operational practices to changing situations. Business processes are the heart of each company. Therefore process excellence has become a key issue. This book introduces a novel approach focusing on the autonomous optimization of business processes by applying sophisticated machine learning techniques such as Relational Reinforcement Learning and Particle Swarm Optimization

Methodology for building and maintaining enterprise architectures in small and medium enterprises

Dissertação de mest., Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Univ. do Algarve, 2013Enterprise architectures are used by companies so that they can understand their structure and dynamics in a more extensive and detailed way, allowing them to reduce costs, increase productivity, promote growth and adapt in a rapidly changing business environment. In order to not only survive but gain competitive advantage, enterprises need their architectures to be in sync with their business, which means being as faithful and up-to-date as possible. Current methodologies for developing architectures such as Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) are designed for large companies and need to be adapted to be applicable to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Also EAP develops the business model based in information gathered in interviews and surveys, which means the processes in the model are at an abstraction level that does not reflect the actual actions being performed by individuals. Additionally, current publications in this area don’t cover how these models can be maintained in automated ways. Stemming from these arguments, the main contributions of this research are first, to adapt EAP defining a methodology that can be applied to a SME. Second, to merge EAP with the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) in order to be able to uncover a business process model from actual work practices captured in users’ action logs. And third, to develop automated ways of analyzing and relating the model with these action logs in order to ease the maintenance of the business model. This research was developed and validated in a real organizational setting within the purchasing department of a company in the retail industry. This work concludes with an overview of what was learned; how some problems found could have been prevented; and how the proposed methodology can be improved for future research.As arquiteturas empresariais são usadas pelas empresas de forma a compreenderem a sua estrutura e dinâmica de uma forma extensiva e detalhada, o que lhes permite reduzir custos, aumentar a produtividade, promover o crescimento e adaptar-se a um ambiente de negócios em rápida mudança. Não apenas para sobreviver como também para ganhar vantagem competitiva, as empresas precisam que as suas arquiteturas estejam em sincronia com o seu negócio, o que significa que estas têm de ser tão fiéis e atualizadas quanto possível. Metodologias atuais para o desenvolvimento de arquiteturas, como o Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) são desenvolvidas para grandes empresas e precisam ser adaptadas para ser aplicáveis a pequenas e médias empresas (PMEs). Também, o EAP constrói o modelo de negócio baseado em informações recolhidas em entrevistas e formulários o que significa que os processos no modelo têm um nível de abstração que não reflete as ações que estão na realidade a ser executadas pelos indivíduos. Além disso, as publicações existentes nesta área não cobrem como estes modelos podem ser mantidos de maneira automatizada. Partindo destes argumentos, as principais contribuições do nosso trabalho são primeiro, adaptar o EAP definindo uma metodologia que pode ser aplicada a uma PME. Em segundo lugar, juntar o EAP com o Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) a fim de ser capaz de obter um modelo de processos de negócio a partir de práticas de trabalho reais, capturadas em logs com ações dos utilizadores. E terceiro, desenvolver formas automatizadas de análise e relacionamento do modelo com esses logs de ação, a fim de facilitar a manutenção do modelo de negócio. A nossa investigação foi desenvolvida e validada num cenário organizacional real dentro do departamento de compras de uma empresa no setor de vendas a retalho. Este trabalho conclui apresentando uma visão geral do que foi aprendido; como alguns problemas encontrados poderiam ter sido evitados; e como a metodologia proposta pode ser melhorada para investigação no futuro

Temporal meta-model framework for Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) development

This thesis has developed a Temporal Meta-Model Framework for semi-automated Enterprise System Development, which can help drastically reduce the time and cost to develop, deploy and maintain Enterprise Information Systems throughout their lifecycle. It proposes that the analysis and requirements gathering can also perform the bulk of the design phase, stored and available in a suitable model which would then be capable of automated execution with the availability of a set of specific runtime components

Web services strategy

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2003.June 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 116-123).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Everything is connected to everything. El Aleph (1945), by Jorge Luis Borges[1] This thesis addresses the need to simplify and streamline web service network infrastructure and to identify business models that best leverage Web services technology and industry dynamics to generate positive business results. Web services have evolved from the simple page-display protocol of their origin and now reach beyond the links that simply updated web data dynamically from corporate databases, to where systems can automatically transact. These Web services represent a series of network business technology standards and capabilities that irrevocably change the way in which businesses will do business. In fact, every business today is a networked business and has opportunities to grow using Web services. This study focuses on the implementation challenges in the financial services market, specifically the On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) sector where legacy mainframes interface with multiple tiers of distribution through proprietary EDI links. The OLTP industry operates under stringent regulatory requirements for availability and audit-ability of not only who performed what transaction, but who had access to the information about the information. In this environment organizational demands on network infrastructure including hardware, software and personnel are changing radically, while concurrently Information Technology (IT) budgets are under pressure. The strategic choices for deploying web services in this environment may contain lessons for other industries where cost effective large scale processing, high availability, security, manageability and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are paramount concerns. In this paper we use a systems dynamics model to simulate the impact of market changes on the adoption of innovative technologies and their commoditization on the industry value chain, with the aim of identifying business models and network topologies which best support the growth of an Open Systems network business. From the results of the simulation we will derive strategic recommendations for networked business models and web services integration strategies to meet Line Of Business (LOB) objectives.by Stephen B. Miles.S.M.M.O.T