Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Service-Oriented Process Models in Telecommunication Business

The thesis concentrates on to evaluate challenges in the business process management and the need for Service-oriented process models in telecommunication business to alleviate the integration work efforts and to reduce total costs of ownership. The business aspect concentrates on operations and business support systems which are tailored for communication service providers. Business processes should be designed in conformance with TeleManagement Forum's integrated business architecture framework. The thesis rationalizes the need to transform organizations and their way of working from vertical silos to horizontal layers and to understand transformational efforts which are needed to adopt a new strategy. Furthermore, the thesis introduces service characterizations and goes deeper into technical requirements that a service compliant middleware system needs to support. At the end of the thesis Nokia Siemens Networks proprietary approach – Process Automation Enabling Suite is introduced, and finally the thesis performs two case studies. The first one is Nokia Siemens Networks proprietary survey which highlights the importance of customer experience management and the second one is an overall research study whose results have been derived from other public surveys covering application integration efforts

Novel processes for smart grid information exchange and knowledge representation using the IEC common information model

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The IEC Common Information Model (CIM) is of central importance in enabling smart grid interoperability. Its continual development aims to meet the needs of the smart grid for semantic understanding and knowledge representation for a widening domain of resources and processes. With smart grid evolution the importance of information and data management has become an increasingly pressing issue not only because far more data is being generated using modern sensing, control and measuring devices but also because information is now becoming recognised as the ‘integral component’ that facilitates the optimal flexibility required of the smart grid. This thesis looks at the impacts of CIM implementation upon the landscape of smart grid issues and presents research from within National Grid contributing to three key areas in support of further CIM deployment. Taking the issue of Enterprise Information Management first, an information management framework is presented for CIM deployment at National Grid. Following this the development and demonstration of a novel secure cloud computing platform to handle such information is described. Power system application (PSA) models of the grid are partial knowledge representations of a shared reality. To develop the completeness of our understanding of this reality it is necessary to combine these representations. The second research contribution reports on a novel methodology for a CIM-based model repository to align PSA representations and provide a knowledge resource for building utility business intelligence of the grid. The third contribution addresses the need for greater integration of information relating to energy storage, an essential aspect of smart energy management. It presents the strategic rationale for integrated energy modeling and a novel extension to the existing CIM standards for modeling grid-scale energy storage. Significantly, this work has already contributed to a larger body of work on modeling Distributed Energy Resources currently under development at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the USA.Dr. Martin Bradley on behalf of National Grid Plc. and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Modeling BDN framework in ArchiMate: benefits management of IS investments applied in the context of media and television industry digital transformation

O alinhamento entre os investimentos em Tecnologia da Informação (TI) e a definição ao dos objetivos de negócios e recorrentemente referido na literatura como uma tarefa primordial com impacto direto no lucro da organização. A Arquitetura Corporativa (EA) desempenha um papel importante na descrição das dependências entre um roteiro de migração ao de TI e as contra- partes de negócios, portanto, facilitando as decisões das partes interessadas. No entanto, as evidencias mostram que um número significativo de projetos de TI não consegue entregar os resultados desejados. Normalmente, as causas do fracasso incluem (i) a predominância de abordagens de gestão financeira de caixa preta que oferecem indicadores fracos, empheg, retorno sobre o investimento ou redução de custos, e (ii) não identificar os benefícios de negócios reais fornecidos pelo valor que pode ser gerado por um investimento em TI. Este artigo usa ArchiMate para propor um modelo para entender, projetar e gerenciar os benefícios do negocio. ArchiMate permite, entre outros, modelar camadas de negócios, aplicativos, tecnologia ou estratégia e agora é estendido com benefícios de negócios. Especificamente, é apresentado um ponto de vista da ArchiMate baseado no modelo Benefit Dependence Network (BDN). O objetivo dessa visão é apoiar os stakeholders que estão ao gerenciando os benefícios a serem alcançados por um investimento em TI. A solução conceitual e discutida e demonstrada no contexto do caso de uso da industria de televisão ao e vídeo de mídia. Posteriormente, as deficiências ontológicas desse modelo s ´ ao discutidas utilizando o método Wand Weber e por meio de entrevistas com especialistas.The alignment between Information Technologies (IT) investments and business objectives definition is recurrently referred in the literature as a paramount task owning a direct impact on the organization’s profit. Enterprise Architecture (EA) plays an important role in describing the dependencies between an IT migration roadmap and business counterparts, therefore, facilitating the stakeholder’s decisions. However, evidence shows that a significant number of IT projects fail to deliver the desired outcomes. Usually, the failure causes are (i) the dominance of blackbox financial management approaches offering poor indicators, e.g., return-on-investment or cost reduction, and (ii) not identifying the real business benefits provided by the value that can be generated by an IT investment. This paper uses ArchiMate to propose a model to understand, design, and manage the business benefits. ArchiMate enables, among others, to model business, application, technology, or strategy layers and is now extended with business benefits. In specific, an ArchiMate viewpoint based on the Benefits Dependency Network (BDN) model is presented. The purpose of this viewpoint is to support the stakeholders that are managing the benefits to be achieved by an IT investment. The conceptual solution is argued and demonstrated in the context of the media video and television industry use case. Afterward, the ontological deficiencies of this model are discussed using the Wand Weber method and through interviews with experts

Enterprise Engineering and Management at the Crossroads

The article provides an overview of the challenges and the state of the art of the discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA), with emphasis on the challenges and future development opportunities of the underlying Information System (IS), and its IT implementation, the Enterprise Information System (EIS). The first challenge is to overcome the narrowness of scope of present practice in IS and EA, and re-gain the coverage of the entire business on all levels of management, and a holistic and systemic coverage of the enterprise as an economic entity in its social and ecological environment. The second challenge is how to face the problems caused by complexity that limit the controllability and manageability of the enterprise as a system. The third challenge is connected with the complexity problem, and describes fundamental issues of sustainability and viability. Following from the third, the fourth challenge is to identify modes of survival for systems, and dynamic system architectures that evolve and are resilient to changes of the environment in which they live. The state of the art section provides pointers to possible radical changes to models, methodologies, theories and tools in EIS design and implementation, with the potential to solve these grand challenges.Griffith Sciences, School of Information and Communication TechnologyNo Full Tex

A resiliency framework for an enterprise cloud

This paper presents a systematic approach to develop a resilient software system which can be developed as emerging services and analytics for resiliency. While using the resiliency as a good example for enterprise cloud security, all resilient characteristics should be blended together to produce greater impacts. A framework, Cloud Computing Adoption Framework (CCAF), is presented in details. CCAF has four major types of emerging services and each one has been explained in details with regard to the individual function and how each one can be integrated. CCAF is an architectural framework that blends software resilience, service components and guidelines together and provides real case studies to produce greater impacts to the organizations adopting Cloud Computing and security. CCAF provides business alignments and provides agility, efficiency and integration for business competitive edge. In order to validate user requirements and system designs, a large scale survey has been conducted with detailed analysis provided for each major question. We present our discussion and conclude that the use of CCAF framework can illustrate software resilience and security improvement for enterprise security. CCAF framework itself is validated as an emerging service for Enterprise Cloud Computing with analytics showing survey analysi

Market fields structure & dynamics in industrial automation

There is a research tradition in the economics of standards which addresses standards wars, antitrust concerns or positive externalities from standards. Recent research has also dealt with the process characteristics of standardisation, de facto standard-setting consortia and intellectual property concerns in the technology specification or implementation phase. Nonetheless, there are no studies which analyse capabilities, comparative industry dynamics or incentive structures sufficiently in the context of standard-setting. In my study, I address the characteristics of collaborative research and standard-setting as a new mode of deploying assets beyond motivations well-known from R&D consortia or market alliances. On the basis of a case study of a leading user organisation in the market for industrial automation technology, but also a descriptive network analysis of cross-community affiliations, I demonstrate that there must be a paradoxical relationship between cooperation and competition. More precisely, I explain how there can be a dual relationship between value creation and value capture respecting exploration and exploitation. My case study emphasises the dynamics between knowledge stocks (knowledge alignment, narrowing and deepening) produced by collaborative standard setting and innovation; it also sheds light on an evolutional relationship between the exploration of assets and use cases and each firm's exploitation activities in the market. I derive standard-setting capabilities from an empirical analysis of membership structures, policies and incumbent firm characteristics in selected, but leading, user organisations. The results are as follows: the market for industrial automation technology is characterised by collaboration on standards, high technology influences of other industries and network effects on standards. Further, system integrators play a decisive role in value creation in the customer-specific business case. Standard-setting activities appear to be loosely coupled to the products offered on the market. Core leaders in world standards in industrial automation own a variety of assets and they are affiliated to many standard-setting communities rather than exclusively committed to a few standards. Furthermore, their R&D ratios outperform those of peripheral members and experience in standard-setting processes can be assumed. Standard-setting communities specify common core concepts as the basis for the development of each member's proprietary products, complementary technologies and industrial services. From a knowledge-based perspective, the targeted disclosure of certain knowledge can be used to achieve high innovation returns through systemic products which add proprietary features to open standards. Finally, the interplay between exploitation and exploration respecting the deployment of standard-setting capabilities linked to cooperative, pre-competitive processes leads to an evolution in common technology owned and exploited by the standard-setting community as a particular kind of innovation ecosystem. --standard-setting,innovation,industry dynamics and context,industrial automation