Mass Customization in Wireless Communication Services: Individual Service Bundles and Tariffs

This paper presents results on mass customization of wireless communications services and tariffs. It advocates for a user-centric view of wireless service configuration and pricing as opposed to present-day service catalog options. The focus is on design methodology and tools for such individual services and tariffs, using altogether information compression, negotiation algorithms, and risk portfolio analysis. We first analyze the user and supplier needs and aspirations. We then introduce the systematic design-oriented approach which can be applied. The implications of this approach for users and suppliers are discussed based on an end-user survey and on model-based calculations. It is shown that users can achieve desired service bundle cost reduction, while suppliers can improve significantly their risk-profit equilibrium points, reduce churn and simplify provisioning.negotiation;mass customization;service configuration;mobile communication services;individual tariffs

Dynamic Model-based Management of Service-Oriented Infrastructure.

Models are an effective tool for systems and software design. They allow software architects to abstract from the non-relevant details. Those qualities are also useful for the technical management of networks, systems and software, such as those that compose service oriented architectures. Models can provide a set of well-defined abstractions over the distributed heterogeneous service infrastructure that enable its automated management. We propose to use the managed system as a source of dynamically generated runtime models, and decompose management processes into a composition of model transformations. We have created an autonomic service deployment and configuration architecture that obtains, analyzes, and transforms system models to apply the required actions, while being oblivious to the low-level details. An instrumentation layer automatically builds these models and interprets the planned management actions to the system. We illustrate these concepts with a distributed service update operation

An Autonomous Engine for Services Configuration and Deployment.

The runtime management of the infrastructure providing service-based systems is a complex task, up to the point where manual operation struggles to be cost effective. As the functionality is provided by a set of dynamically composed distributed services, in order to achieve a management objective multiple operations have to be applied over the distributed elements of the managed infrastructure. Moreover, the manager must cope with the highly heterogeneous characteristics and management interfaces of the runtime resources. With this in mind, this paper proposes to support the configuration and deployment of services with an automated closed control loop. The automation is enabled by the definition of a generic information model, which captures all the information relevant to the management of the services with the same abstractions, describing the runtime elements, service dependencies, and business objectives. On top of that, a technique based on satisfiability is described which automatically diagnoses the state of the managed environment and obtains the required changes for correcting it (e.g., installation, service binding, update, or configuration). The results from a set of case studies extracted from the banking domain are provided to validate the feasibility of this propos

Modeling and Control of MapReduce Systems

posterInternational audienceSystems based on the MapReduce programming model are emerging as a central tool for deploying jobs that process large datasets in parallel. However the configuration of MapReduce systems is a complex process and at the moments it's left up to the user. These ad-hoc configuration methods make it difficult for small companies to take advantage of the growth of cloud computing solutions that provide resources as a service. Furthermore, the definition of SLAs becomes a complicated process for the user and the service provider as well. We propose a control theoretical approach to solving these problems. This implies the development of a general model that captures the dynamics of MapReduce systems. Finally, we intend to provide novel control methods that ease the configuration process and guarantee service level objectives such as constraints on system performance (execution times) and dependability (latency, availability) while optimizing resource consumption

Estimation of Standardized Effort in the Heterogeneous Gulf of Mexico Shrimp Fleet

In this paper we estimate nominal and standardized shrimping effort in the Gulf of Mexico for the years 1965 through 1993. We accomplish this by first developing a standardization method (model) and then an expansion method (model). The expansion model estimates nominal days fished for noninterview landings data. The standardization model converts nominal days fished to standard days fished. We then characterize the historical trends of the penaeid shrimp fishery byvessel configuration, relative fishing power, and nominal and standardized effort. Wherever possible, we provide comparison with previous estimates by the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA

Product v Service system configuration: a generic knowledge-based model for commercial offers

At a time when modes of consumption are rapidly evolving, consumer attitudes and expectations are changing. Today, customers want more and more products and services that can be customised to their needs. Furthermore, they are more willing to pay for usage of a product rather than ownership. On the other hand, companies are adding more and more services to the products they are bringing to market in order to create added value and differentiate themselves from their competitors. To adapt to these new market trends, companies now have to offer their customers a more sophisticated catalog of solutions, in both product and services, including all conceivable combinations of the two. The aim of this article is to propose a generic knowledge-based model, dedicated to commercial offer configuration which is able to cope with the whole variety of solutions a company can deliver. To our knowledge, although some works on product configuration, service and product-service system configuration exist, none of them is generic enough to support product, service and product-service configuration at the same time when defining commercial offers. In this article, after giving a state-of-the-art assessment of product and service configurations, the need for a generic model able to cover the whole range and diversity of commercial offers is established, a knowledge-based model is defined and its relevance is demonstrated on seven use-cases coming from secondary and tertiary sector companies

Discovering Process Reference Models from Process Variants Using Clustering Techniques

In today's dynamic business world, success of an enterprise increasingly depends on its ability to react to changes in a quick and flexible way. In response to this need, process-aware information systems (PAIS) emerged, which support the modeling, orchestration and monitoring of business processes and services respectively. Recently, a new generation of flexible PAIS was introduced, which additionally allows for dynamic process and service changes. This, in turn, has led to large number of process and service variants derived from the same model, but differs in structures due to the applied changes. This paper provides a sophisticated approach which fosters learning from past process changes and allows for determining such process variants. As a result we obtain a generic process model for which the average distances between this model and the process variants becomes minimal. By adopting this generic process model in the PAIS, need for future process configuration and adaptation will decrease. The mining method proposed has been implemented in a powerful proof-of-concept prototype and further validated by a comparison between other process mining algorithms

Stability criteria for controlled queueing networks

We give criteria for the stability of a very general queueing model under different levels of control. A complete classification of stability (or positive recurrence), transience and null-recurrence is presented for the two queue model. The stability and instability results are extended for models with N > 3 queues. We look at a broad class of models which can have the following features: Customers arrive at one, several or all of the queues from the outside with exponential inter arrival times. We often have the case where a arrival stream can be routed so that under different routing schemes each queue can have external arrivals, i.e. we assume we have some control over the routing of the arrivals. We also consider models where the arrival streams are fixed. We view the service in a more abstract way, in that we allow a number к of different service configurations. Under every such service configuration service is provided to some or all of the queues, length of service time can change from one service configuration to another and we can change from one configuration to another according two some control policy. The service times are assumed to be exponentially distributed. The queueing models we consider are networks where, after completion at one queue, a customer might be fed back into another queue where it will be served another time often under with a different service time. These feedback probabilities change with the service configurations. Our interest is in different types of control policies which allow us to change the routing of arrivals and configurations of the service from time to time so that the controlled queue length process (which in most cases is Markov) is stable. The semi-martingale or Lyapunov function methods we use give necessary and sufficient conditions for the stability classification. We will look at some two queue models with different inter arrival and service times where the queueing process is still Markov

Business Model Development for a Mobile Context-aware Service

Mobile information services, preceded on tablet computers, smartphones or other mobile devices, are a significant source of information for people nowadays. By including context data, a new category of information services has been established. On the application side, a range of innovative services, providing the user with an added-value, could be observed in the previous years, boosted by the wide-spread adoption of smartphones in developed countries. For the application provider, the question how to configure the business model is crucial: several factors such as the service configuration, the revenue model and the configuration of the value creation network, which all can be seen as decisive factors for success or failure of a service. In this paper we present a context-aware service named \u27Digital Graffiti\u27 and describe the process of the business model development. As an outcome of this process, a specific business model, based on feasibility and future prospect, was chosen and further described