Interoperability standards for seamless communication : an analysis of domain-specific initiatives.

Achieving seamless interoperability among heterogeneous communication systems and technologies is critical in todays’ networked business world, ranging from joint collaborative military operations that need to exchange critical information in real-time, to complex e-business scenarios of organizations from different industry sectors using heterogeneous technologies and communication infrastructures to execute complex inter-organizational business processes. The aim of this article is to present a review of current domain-specific standardization initiatives towards seamless communication, discussing challenges and highlighting directions for further research and development work. This article has two main contributions. First, it provides an up-to-date review of the most relevant domain-specific standardization initiatives aiming at achieving seamless interoperability among communication systems. Second, by comparing these initiatives, a set of recommendations is advanced towards improving further interoperability developments, offering a unique niche for researchers, practitioners and developers to make significant contributions

Introduction to the Second International Workshop on Performance Assessment and Auditing in Service Computing (PAASC2012)

The main goal of the International Workshop on Performance Assessment and Auditing in Service Computing (PAASC) is to bring together researchers and industry representatives, providing them the opportunity to present and discuss research and development results, lessons learned, and advance new ideas on topics in the area of performance assessment, business modeling and auditing in service computing. Technical papers of high quality have been submitted. Four papers have been accepted and presented at the PAASC 2012 International Workshop

XML interoperability standards for seamless communication: An analysis of industry-neutral and domain-specific initiatives

Attaining seamless interoperability among heterogeneous communication systems and technologies remains a great challenge in todays’ networked world. Real time information exchange among heterogeneous and geographically distributed systems is required to support the execution of complex e-business scenarios supported by cross-organizational business processes. XML emerged as a foundation for performing e-business, receiving an increasing adoption in the new market economies. Several interoperability standards emerged, which provide specifications on performing business-to-business e-business, what information to share, when and how. The aim of this article is to present an up-to-date review of current XML-based industry-neutral and domain-specific standardization initiatives towards seamless communication, discussing their commonalities and differences, and highlighting directions for further research and development work. An overview of the main standards’ elements is also made, analyzing how different initiatives address them.\u3cbr/\u3e\u3cbr/\u3eAs numerous standardization initiatives are quickly emerging and changing, it is not easy to understand them. By analyzing the most commonly referred XML-based standards for interoperability, this article has two main contributions. First, it provides an up-to-date review of the most relevant industry-neutral and domain-specific standardization initiatives aiming at achieving seamless interoperability among communication systems. Second, by comparing these initiatives, a set of recommendations is advanced towards improving further interoperability developments, offering a unique niche for researchers, practitioners and developers to make significant contributions.\u3cbr/\u3

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

Introduction to the proceedings of the workshop on pervasive analytical service clouds for the enterprise and beyond (PASCEB) 2013

The First Workshop on Pervasive Analytical Service Clouds for the Enterprise and Beyond (PASCEB) 2013was held in conjunctionwith the ICSOC’13 conference in Berlin, Germany. The workshop focused on an emerging area addressing the gap of how to design socio-technical, dependable and secure cloud-service ecosystems for commercial collaboration use. To establish separation of concerns, the addressed gap has different aspects in terms of concepts, frameworks, technologies that facilitate the management and coordination of large Internet of Things (IoT), -Services (IoS) and -People (IoP) that comprise a service-ecosystem for collaborating towards a common goal for which we envision a lifecycle. Integral is the analysis of large volumes of heterogeneous, highspeed data sets, i.e., big data.With the latter, the quality of socio-technical collaboration can evolve in a better way

Collaborative network for district energy operation and semantic technologies: A case study

The growing interest toward renewable energies and alternative energy sources has led to the development of an increasingly complex district energy landscape with multiple agents and systems. In this new prospect, some frameworks such as USEF [1] or holonic multi-agent systems [2] propose new approaches, where, in the way of a Virtual Organisation Breeding Environment (VOBE) [3], diverse organizations cooperate on a long-term basis to run an energy system. This study focuses on the THERMOSS project, an EU-funded project that investigates the efficient operation of district heating and cooling networks, and demonstrates that such organisation can be integrated into the Collaborative Networks (CNs) paradigm. Additionally, a semantic approach is briefly introduced as a mean to support and improve data transfer and communication between the different entities of THERMOSS as a CN

Predicting the Relationship Between Virtual Enterprises in an Agile Supply Chain through Structural Equation Modelling

Virtual enterprises are formed in response to turbulent market conditions and are influenced by factors such as the changing relationship between customers and suppliers, the spread of agile supply chains and shorter product life cycles. Research suggests that successful virtual co-operation and supply chain agility are best achieved when the core capabilities of the partners are complementary. This paper therefore investigates the relationship between virtual enterprises in supply chains and provides further insights into the factors affecting agility. A hypothetical model is developed to examine the factors and a structural equation model is used to test the hypotheses, based on survey data from virtual enterprises in Mongolia. The structural equation model uses exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis. The results provide empirical evidence of the ability of the model to predict benefits arising from the formation of the virtual enterprise