ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS FOR VALUE NETWORKS IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY

Value networks are one of the main forms of value creation today. Suppliers, manufacturers and customers form a dynamic collaboration structure. Networks and companies alike are always subject to external and internal influences which require changes in the way things are done. To make sure that the required changes take their intended effect, they have to be implemented on all levels of the enterprise architecture (EA). Research with respect to EA in value networks in the service industry (VNSI) is only in its beginnings. To understand the state of the art, we analyzed 88 papers with respect to the architecture layers in VNSI. Since we base on the fact that a successful introduction of change, e.g. new IT solutions, requires a holistic view on EA, we analyzed the papers according to their covering of the different levels of an EA. Our hypothesis is that most of the papers only cover very specific aspects without positioning their proposed solution in a holistic context. We propose a reference model based on a literature review as well as the results of the paper analysis. This reference model allows for a positioning of solutions in a holistic context and with that adds to a better basis for implementing change in VNSI

An inter-organization workflow management system for virtual enterprises

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

REMUS

Heutige Unternehmen verwenden mehr und mehr inter-organisationale/externe Services innerhalb ihrer internen Gesch ̈ftsprozesse. Die Vorteile dieses Service-Outsourcings sind vielfältig, und reichen von geringeren Wartungsaufwand bis zu Kostenvorhersage. Jedoch müssen Unternehmen, um sich nicht an einen einzelnen Anbieter zu binden, dafür sorgen, dass die verwendeten Services austauschbar sind. Um diese gewünschte Flexibilität bei der Serviceauswahl zu unterstützen ist ein Markplatz für Services, welcher auf einer gemeinsamen Menge von Regel aufbaut, nötig. In dieser Arbeit stellen wir ein hybrides Prozess und Service Verzeichnis vor, welches als Basis für solch einen Marktplatz verwendet werden kann. Die Einteilung in unterschiedliche An- wendungsdomänen mit gemeinsamen Schnittstellen unterstützt Kunden bei der Nutzung der angebotenen Services. Die Möglichkeit innerhalb der Servicebeschreibungen die Schnittstellen/Parameter zu transformieren erlaubt es Anbietern flexibel mit ihren Services umzuge- hen. Weiter stellen wir in dieser Arbeit einen Prototyp vor, welcher demonstriert, wie diese Information in Kombination mit adaptiven Workflowsystemen innerhalb von Cloud - Infrastrukturen verwendet werden kann. Um die Umsetzbarkeit der vorgestellten Konzepte zu zeigen wird eine Anwendung für mobile Geräte vorgestellt, welche ein reales Beispiel unter Einbeziehung des Marktplatzes ausführt.Today’s companies more and more embrace the utilization of inter-organizational services as part of their internal business processes. The benefit from this outsourcing is manifold, ranging from lower maintenance burden to predictable cost. One problem is, that for companies in order to not bind themselves to a single service provider, they have to ensure that the services they consume are interchangeable. Therefore a marketplace for services, based in a common set of rules, that allows companies to stay flexible when selecting business partners is needed. In this thesis we introduce a hybrid process and service repository acting as a base for such a marketplace. Organizing services into different application domains with a common interface allows easy usage of the provided services for the customers, while the support of interface transformation within service description keeps the vendors flexible. We further introduce a prototype system demonstrating how to use this information on in combination with adaptive workflow execution engine and Cloud infrastructures as a base. To proof the feasibility of the introduced concepts, a mobile client executing a real-world example is introduced

Selección de socios en las Empresas Virtuales Dinámicas

En el presente documento se describen los aspectos más importantes asociados a la aplicación software DVEBreeder. Esta herramienta ha sido creada expresamente para facilitar el proceso de selección de socios en las Empresas Virtuales Dinámicas utilizando, para ello, dos tecnologías procedentes del ámbito de la Inteligencia Artificial, como son los Sistemas Multiagente y los Sistemas Expertos. En dicha aplicación el proceso de selección se realiza en base a un modelo que engloba y amplía las posibilidades de los distintos enfoques existentes en la literatura, y en el que se hace uso del reciente concepto de Entornos de Gestación.Departamento de Informátic

Vm-flow: Using Web Services Orchestration And Choreography To Implement A Policy-based Virtual Marketplace

Companies are daily trying to find new ways to cope with the increasing competitive pressures imposed by the global economy. Static and huge enterprises are being replaced by dynamic business networks where each participant offers to the others specialized services. Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is being considered by many as a very interesting technological solution to the new B2B interactions introduced by this economical scenario. This paper presents a Virtual Marketplace infrastructure, called VM-Flow, which supports Dynamic Virtual Enterprises, is workflow-based and introduces a series of interaction policies that treat aspects like autonomy and privacy. Also, Service Composition is shown as a suitable solution to implement these policy-based interorganizational interactions. Some issues on the developed prototype are discussed and an application built over it is described. © 2004 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.146265285van der Aalst, W.M.P., The application of Petri Nets to Workflow Management (1998) The Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers, 8 (1), pp. 21-66Ávila, P., Putnik, G.D., Cunha, M.M., Brokerage function in Agile/Virtual Enterprise integration - A literature review (2002) 3rd IFIP Working Conference On Infrastructures For Virtual Enterprises (PRO-VÉ02), pp. 65-72. , Portugalvan der Aalst, W.M.P., Weske, M., The P2P Approach to Interorganizational Workflows (2001) Proceedings of the 13th International Conference On Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'01), 2068, pp. 140-156. , Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, BerlinBichler, M., Beam, C., Segev, A., An electronic broker for business-to-business electronic commerce on the Internet (1998) Int. Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 7, pp. 315-331(2003), http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-bpel/, BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, SAP AG and Siebel Systems. Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) - Version 1.1(2002), http://www.sun.com/software/xml/developers/wsci/sci-spec-10.pdf, BEA Systems, Intalio, SAP and Sun Microsystems. Web Services Choreography Interface 1.0Curbera, F., Khalaf, R., Mukhi, N., Tai, S., Weerawarana, S., The next step in Web Services (2003) Communications of the ACM, 46 (10), pp. 29-34(2003), http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/bpws4j/, IBM. Business Process Execution Language for Web Services Java Run TimeMin, H., Zhou, G., Supply chain modeling: Past, present and future (2002) Computers & Industrial Engineering, 43, pp. 231-249Ouzounis, V., (2001) An Agent-Based Platform For the Management of Dynamic Virtual Enterprises, , Doctor Thesis, TU BerlinOuzounis, V., Tschammer, V., Towards Dynamic Virtual Enterprises (2001) Proceedings of the First IFIP Conference On E-Commerce, E-Business, E-Government (I3E 2001), pp. 177-192. , Zurich, SwitzerlandPeltz, C., (2003) Web Services Orchestration - a Review of Emerging Technologies, Tools, and Standards, , White Paper, Hewlett PackardPapazoglou, M.P., Georgakopoulos, D., Service-oriented computing (2003) Communications of the ACM, 46 (10), pp. 25-28Santos, I.J.G., Madeira, E.R.M., Policy-based Orchestration and Choreography of Services on Dynamic Virtual Enterprises (2003) 3rd IFIP I3E Conference On E-Commerce, E-Business and E-Government, , Research Colloquium, BrazilSchulz, K., Orlowska, M., Architectural Issues for Cross-Organisational B2B Interactions (2001) International Workshop On Distributed Dynamic Multiservice Architectures (DDMA), , IEEE Computer Society Press, USAStrieker, C., Riboni, S., Kradolfer, M., Taylor, J., Market-based Workflow Management for Supply Chains of Services (2000) 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences (HICSS-33)Silva, F.R.S., Wainer, J., Madeira, E.R.M., Ellis, C., CORBA Based Architecture for Large Scale Workflow (2000) IEICE Transactions On Communications, 83 B (5), pp. 988-998Tolle, M., Bernus, P., Vesterager, J., Reference Models for Virtual Enterprises (2002) IFIP Working Conference On Infrastructures For Virtual Enterprises (PRO-VÉ02), pp. 3-10. , PortugalVandermeer, D., Datta, A., Dutta, K., Thomas, H., Ramamritham, K., Navathe, S.B., FUSION: A System Allowing Dynamic Web Service Composition and Automatic Execution (2003) IEEE International Conference On E-Commerce, p. 399. , California, USA(2004) Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0 - Part 1: Core Language, , http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl20, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), W3C Working Draft, March(2004) Web Services Choreography Description Language Version 1.0 (WS-CDL), , http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-cdl-10/, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), W3C Working Draft, Apri