Towards a methodology for trade-off analysis in a multi-cloud environment considering monitored QoS metrics and economic performance assessment results

Cloud computing and service-oriented computing brought new opportunities for companies. However, numerous challenges, (e.g., related to application design and deployment, service monitoring) are associated with the cloud and provisioned services. Complex SLAs need to be established and monitored. Current approaches do not sufficiently address the challenges of QoS monitoring in multi-cloud environments in a holistic manner, tackling mainly technical aspects. This paper presents an on-going research project towards the development of a methodology for a trade-off analysis in a multi-cloud environment considering monitored QoS metrics and economic performance assessment results. The research methodology followed and partial results are presented, and directions for future work are discussed. Based on the needs identified, an architecture for SLA monitoring and dynamic runtime adaptations in multi-cloud environments is proposed, tackling technical and business-economic aspects

Zur Geschichte des Wetzlarer Domes

We present a competence-based collaborative network, the West Midlands Collaborative Commerce Marketplace (WMCCM) that was successfully employed to gain new business opportunities for SMEs in the West Midlands region of the UK. The competence profiling methodology employed places an emphasis on what SMEs are capable of doing rather than what products they make. This generates an increased number and wider range of enquiries to the SME. Further, a combination of tender feeds classified by semantic analysis of the tender requirements matched to the SME capability with a novel partnership formation function generates higher level systems type opportunities for these SMEs, which they would have been unable to undertake on their own. The paper discusses the functionality of the WMCCM using a case study to demonstrate its functionalities with reference to the I-BPM framework from the ECOLEAD project. It also highlights the roles in managing competence exchanges in collaborative networks as well as providing a common infrastructure for businesses to launch and operate their virtual organizations

Towards identifying the business value of big data in a digital business ecosystem : a case study from the financial services industry

In today’s increasingly digital business ecosystem, big data offers numerous opportunities. Although research on big data receives a lot of attention, research on the business value of big data is scarce. The research project presented in this article aims at advancing the research in this area, focusing on the identification of opportunities towards determining the business value of big data. The goal of the research project pursued is to develop a framework that supports decision makers to identify opportunities for attaining business value form big data in the financial services industry. The proposed framework was constructed based on information collected by performing an in-depth literature review and interviews with experts in the area of big data and financial services industry, and it was empirically validated via a questionnaire sent to experts. A comparative analysis was also performed, emphasizing the strengths of the proposed framework over existing approaches

Service selection and ranking: a framework proposal and prototype implementation.

Organizations that are part of collaborative service networks need to handle increasing amounts of data in their information systems to construct complex customer-oriented solutions from dynamically selected service elements. This brings numerous challenges in today’s highly competitive markets, where companies need to provide customers with services that have a high level of quality, in a time and cost effective manner. Having prior knowledge of the performance associated with specific choreographies of services allows companies to provide customers with services tailored to their specific requests, while maintaining a high quality of the services. This paper presents an approach for service selection and ranking considering customers’ requirements, knowledge of the historic behavior of services, business process constraints and the characteristics of the execution environment. Following the specifications of the proposed framework, a prototype has been implemented targeting the automotive sector. Tests of this prototype illustrate the usability and validity of the proposed approach

Conceptual Reference Model for Virtual Factory: Potentials for Collaborative Business

Part 11: Reference and Conceptual ModelsInternational audienceThe concept of combining the power of several independent factories to achieve complex manufacturing processes as so-called virtual manufacturing enterprises is not new and has been addressed by several research projects in recent years. However, there is still a need for adequate methodological support and tools for modelling, structuring and controlling of the next generation of manufacturing systems, such as the virtual factory. In this research, a conceptual virtual factory reference model is presented with the goal to provide companies with general guidelines to manage and monitor the business processes that are needed to create, execute, and dissolve a virtual factory. The virtual factory reference model was built taking into account industrial’s requirements and by reviewing the literature in several relevant fields of research such as collaborative networks, supply networks, manufacturing networks, supply chain management, and business processes. Afterwards, it has been validated through its application to future virtual factories of three different industrial sectors: machinery, energy, and semiconductor

Using Key Alignment Indicators for Performance Evaluation in Collaborative Networks

Part 6: Performance Management - IIInternational audienceThis paper aims to explore the performance alignment in collaborative network environments. It has been stated that performance management based on data collection and the evaluation of key performance indicators (KPIs) may not be effective due to the different indicators and measurement systems in place for the various participants in a collaborative network (CN). Therefore, measuring the strategic and inter-organizational alignment based on key alignment indicators (KAIs) can be an excellent alternative to improve performance evaluation systems. This approach has led to the exploration of the performance prediction paradigm and develops tools to estimate a performance and evaluate the degree of alignment by creating instances of a future performance in collaborative networks