EDOC2011 PhD Student Symposium Proceedings

Post-proceedings of the EDOC2011 PhD Student Symposium held in Helsinki 26.8.2011.Peer reviewe

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

Developing a reference architecture for inter-organizational business collaboration setup systems

The question of how a service consumer and a service provider should collaborate with each other in a business-to-business (B2B) setting is an ongoing research issue. The concept of electronic Sourcing (eSourcing) has been proposed as an integral concept with the EU research project CrossWork. The properties of eSourcing are explored, however, the question arises how a service consumer and a provider need to interact with each other during setup time for establishing an eSourcing configuration? The concept of eSourcing offers more flexibility than other approaches in that respect. Thus, this paper investigates the characteristics of interaction between a service consumer and provider during setup time for establishing an enactable B2B collaboration. These characteristics are employed to discover interaction patterns in a dop-down way that are exemplified for the concept of eSourcing. As such, the discovered patterns form the basis for the design of a reference architecture that serves as a foundation for the design of e-collaboration setup systems

A pattern repository for establishing inter-organizational business processes

In the domain of business-to-business (B2B) collaboration, companies are pursuing the objective of electronically linking their business processes for improving their supply chains. For creating such inter-organizational collaboration, intra- and inter-organizational knowledge workers (IKWs) function as assisting experts. However, IKWs must not constantly reinvent the wheel but should instead be supported by a repository that contains knowledge about how to design business processes. Thus, this paper proposes the support of IKWs by a pattern repository for the effective and efficient design of inter-organizational business processes. A pattern is conceptually formulated knowledge that is technology independent. By storing patterns in a uniform specification template of a meta model, it is possible to perform systematic reasoning. Having information readily available about the technology support of individual patterns, IKWs can quickly analyse with which intersection of pattern sets it is possible to link intra-organizational business processes

Evolving process views

Context: Process views support the paradigm of Business Process Outsourcing, in which providers perform business processes on behalf of their clients. A public process view shields secret or irrelevant details from a private, internal business process, thus allowing a provider to reveal only relevant, non-confidential parts of its business process to its clients. Providers can change their internal business processes that may result in inconsistencies with the corresponding process views.\u3cbr/\u3e\u3cbr/\u3eObjective: This paper aims to develop an approach for propagating changes from an internal, private process to its public process view, such that the internal process and its process view remain consistent.\u3cbr/\u3e\u3cbr/\u3eMethod: We develop the approach in a formal way. Definitions of process models and process views are based on BPEL, the standard language for realizing process models using state-of-the-art service-oriented technology. We validate the feasibility of the approach by showing how it can be supported by a conceptual system architecture.\u3cbr/\u3e\u3cbr/\u3eResults: The approach relies on two key results. First, a formal characterization of the set of private changes to an internal process, i.e., changes that do not need to be propagated to the process view. Second, a characterization of the non-private changes that can safely be propagated from an internal process to its process view such that they remain consistent. Other non-private changes result in an internal process and a process view that are not consistent. The approach is supported by a system architecture for process-based business collaboration.\u3cbr/\u3e\u3cbr/\u3eConclusion: The approach supports providers in deciding if and how changes to a private, internal process propagate to its public process view such that the process view and the internal process remain consistent. The approach allows clients to monitor a public process view such that they can safely track changes made to a private, internal process.\u3cbr/\u3