The Machine-to-Everything (M2X) Economy: Business Enactments, Collaborations and e-Governance

Nowadays, business enactments almost exclusively focus on human-to-human business transactions. However, the ubiquitousness of smart devices enables business enactments among autonomously acting machines, thereby providing the foundation for the machine-driven Machine-to-Everything (M2X) Economy. Human-to-human business is governed by enforceable contracts either in the form of oral, or written agreements. Still, a machine-driven ecosystem requires a digital equivalent that is accessible to all stakeholders. Additionally, an electronic contract platform enables fact-tracking, non-repudiation, auditability and tamper-resistant storage of information in a distributed multi-stakeholder setting. A suitable approach for M2X enactments are electronic smart contracts that allow to govern business transactions using a computerized transaction protocol such as a blockchain. In this position paper, we argue in favor of an open, decentralized and distributed smart contract-based M2X Economy that supports the corresponding multi-stakeholder ecosystem and facilitates M2X value exchange, collaborations, and business enactments. Finally, it allows for a distributed e-governance model that fosters open platforms and interoperability. Thus, serving as a foundation for the ubiquitous M2X Economy and its ecosystem

The Machine-to-Everything (M2X) economy: business enactments, collaborations, and e-governance

Nowadays, business enactments almost exclusively focus on human-to-human business transactions. However, the ubiquitousness of smart devices enables business enactments among autonomously acting machines, thereby providing the foundation for the machine-driven Machine-to-Everything (M2X) Economy. Human-to-human business is governed by enforceable contracts either in the form of oral, or written agreements. Still, a machine-driven ecosystem requires a digital equivalent that is accessible to all stakeholders. Additionally, an electronic contract platform enables fact-tracking, non-repudiation, auditability and tamper-resistant storage of information in a distributed multi-stakeholder setting. A suitable approach for M2X enactments are electronic smart contracts that allow to govern business transactions using a computerized transaction protocol such as a blockchain. In this position paper, we argue in favor of an open, decentralized and distributed smart contract-based M2X Economy that supports the corresponding multi-stakeholder ecosystem and facilitates M2X value exchange, collaborations, and business enactments. Finally, it allows for a distributed e-governance model that fosters open platforms and interoperability. Thus, serving as a foundation for the ubiquitous M2X Economy and its ecosystem

UniFlexView : a unified framework for consistent construction of BPMN and BPEL process views

Process view technologies allow organizations to create different granularity levels of abstraction of their business processes, therefore enabling a more effective business process management, analysis, interoperation, and privacy controls. Existing research proposed view construction and abstraction techniques for block-based (ie, BPEL) and graph-based (ie, BPMN) process models. However, the existing techniques treat each type of the two types of models separately. Especially, this brings in challenges for achieving a consistent process view for a BPEL model that derives from a BPMN model. In this paper, we propose a unified framework, namely UniFlexView, for supporting automatic and consistent process view construction. With our framework, process modelers can use our proposed View Definition Language to specify their view construction requirements disregarding the types of process models. Our UniFlexView's system prototype has been developed as a proof of concept and demonstration of the usability and feasibility of our framework. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Service outsourcing with process views

Service outsourcing is a business paradigm in which an organization has a part of its business process performed by a service provider. Process views are pivotal to support this way of working. A process view shields secret or irrelevant details from a private business process, thus allowing an organization to reveal only public, relevant parts of its private business process to partner organizations. This paper introduces a specification framework to support service outsourcing using process views. To enable the construction of process views at various levels of detail, the framework defines several projection relations between process views and the underlying internal processes. To allow consumers and providers of process views to establish an outsourcing relation, the framework defines several matching relations between the respective views that are comprehensive and flexible for service outsourcing. A proof-of-concept prototype tool implements the framework, which is applied in a case study