ODP RM reflections on open service ecosystems

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Abstract

This paper reflects on the use of the ODP reference model in the development of Pilarcos open service ecosystem architecture. The Pilarcos open service ecosystem architecture provides an environment where inter-enterprise collaborations can be collectively managed, utilizing correctness and acceptability criteria set in ecosystem-wide dynamic processes. The correctness requirements are defined in terms of business network models, policies and service definitions that are dynamically utilized as complex conformance reference points. Failures to conform to these reference points trigger pre-committed recovery behavior. The ODP reference model provides sufficient and efficient facilities for the design of this kind of complex, adaptive system.

Highlights

► Introduces the Pilarcos open service ecosystem for dynamic inter-enterprise business. ► Uses the ODP RM for ecosystem architecture and ecosystem governance. ► Refines ODP RM to business-oriented needs in inter-enterprise collaborations.

Introduction

The success and competitive edge of enterprises have become increasingly dependent on the enterprises' agility to act as members in business networks that support their own business strategies. Therefore, integration solutions with their well-weathered strategic networks are no longer sufficient. Instead, there is need for more open marketplaces where previously unknown services and partnerships can be utilized.

In fact, just the marketplace is not sufficient, but open service ecosystems are required. In biology, an ecosystem means an environment where flora and fauna live and die, utilize resources and interact with each other, and eventually, new species can develop. This behavior is restricted by laws of nature, or by, for example, human interventions.

Similarly, inter-enterprise collaborations (i.e., business networks) that are governed by multi-party contracts can be bred, run their natural life-cycle, become terminated, and leave experience knowledge behind in a service ecosystem. The open service ecosystems comprise governance processes for inter-enterprise collaboration creation, competition, and ecosystem evolution controlled by its “natural laws”. The ecosystem is supported with infrastructure services that solve the evident problems of semantic and pragmatic interoperability and collaboration-governing contract management. Furthermore, the ecosystem must support the creation of trust relationships with previously unknown partners, and reacting to encountered breaches of trust within collaborations.

Enterprises seeking success through networked business expect to implement their strategies through the creation of new market opportunities by new collaboration models (i.e., business network models), new collaborations and offering new services. They also expect efficiency of service production through reusability, model-based, platform-independent methodology and tools. Furthermore, enterprises need automation utilities for decision-making for committing to collaborations and for producing feedback for business process improvement (BPI), ecosystem improvement and improving their own positioning on the open service markets that the ecosystem represents.

To address this challenge, we have set as our goal to create a computating environment to support consistent service ecosystems [1]. The criteria for a successful service ecosystem architecture include valid functionality for the needs of networked business, involving

  • the life-cycles of individual collaborations,

  • the gaining of experience on the suitability of services and business network models available and utilizing that knowledge to improve the ecosystem,

  • the production of services and business network models to the ecosystem, and

  • the guarding of membership in the ecosystem.

In addition, the ecosystem architecture nonfunctional properties need to satisfy the stakeholders, such as acceptable performance and overhead in terms of operation time and effort of system management, and correctness and completeness of computational solutions.

The functional and non-functional requirements address the business-level expectations a) from an individual enterprise point of view, b) from the established collaboration point of view, and c) from the ecosystem point of view. The involved stakeholders also include those enterprises that provide infrastructure services to support the basic processes of collaboration management in the system.

The resulting service ecosystems are complex, adaptive systems. The ecosystem infrastructure has the role of helping enterprises and collaborations to react to business-related and technical changes in their environment, and governing the correctness and acceptability of collaborations.

The design of such a large complex, adaptive system requires the use of a consistency-supporting conceptual model and the use of viewpoint modeling to succeed. In our work on developing the Pilarcos open service ecosystem [2], [1] the interaction with the development of the ODP reference model framework (open distributed processing reference model [3], [4], ODP RM) has had a significant role. We have directly utilized many of the ODP basic concepts and terms, while enhancing some of them to directly address the networked business domain needs. Furthermore, we have adopted the ODP viewpoints for the separation of concerns in the management of ecosystem artefacts.

This paper discusses the governance principles, processes, and ecosystem infrastructure functionalities in the Pilarcos open service ecosystem architecture. We will see how ODP concepts and viewpoints have been utilized for dynamically declared reference points that ensure some correctness and appropriateness properties of the established collaborations. Further, we find ODP reference model to be a sufficient and efficient tool for specifying complex, adaptive systems.

The remaining paper is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the challenges of open service ecosystems and their governance, while Section 3 recaptures the essential features of the ODP reference model. Section 4 discusses the ecosystem utilities and means for collaboration management in such a way that the correctness and appropriateness of the collaboration can be controlled through dynamic reference points. The section also indicates where the ODP concepts, viewpoints and functions are utilized. Section 5 identifies the extensions the Pilarcos architecture has made to the ODP elements, compares Pilarcos to service-oriented computing (SOC) environments such as the Web Services technology stack (WS), and virtual organization breeding environments (VBE). We conclude with recommendations on future ODP family standardization themes.

Section snippets

Towards open service ecosystems

The challenges of modeling and engineering services and managing inter-enterprise collaborations have risen as technological enablers have been developed. In addition to supporting technical interworking transparency in enterprise systems and in distributed computing generally, recent development has increased the pressure of incorporating business-level intelligence into the interoperability solutions. Moreover, automation and dynamism of collaboration management have become an important

ODP reference model as an architectural framework

The open distributed processing reference model, ODP RM [26], [3], [4], [27], provides a family of standards for distributed information processing systems that can be exploited in heterogeneous environments and under multiple organizational domains. The model is targeted for architecture designers, standardization bodies, and vendor consortia, to guide them in the design of software architectures — and nowadays, increasingly in the design of enterprise architectures and inter-enterprise

Building service ecosystem utilities

Having recalled the ODP reference model elements that are most relevant for the Pilarcos ecosystem concepts, we now proceed to viewing the Pilarcos design in more detail. First, an overview is given on the ODP specification style the approach follows; then, key concepts and ecosystem infrastructure functions are detailed.

Discussion

Earlier, we have shown how the ODP concepts have been utilized in the building of the Pilarcos ecosystem architecture. The Pilarcos ecosystem characteristics provide an example of how the business and computing facilities can be aligned in a systematic, dynamic environment where consistency, correctness and acceptability of collaborations can be controlled better than in an ad-hoc manner. On one hand, these characteristics could not have been achieved without the dynamic, type- and model-based

Conclusion

The experience in developing Pilarcos architecture and related prototype implementations has taken place in interaction with the ODP standards work. Thus it is natural that the ODP facilities have proven to be sufficient and efficient for specifying the Pilarcos ecosystems. Furthermore, we can note that the ODP facilities are sufficient for any adaptive, complex system needs. Depending on the application area some additional concepts and requirements must be added to the generic frame. In the

Acknowledgment

This work is part of my research group activities (cinco.cs.helsinki.fi) at the Department of Computer science at the University of Helsinki.

Lea Kutvonen is an affiliate professor at the University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, where she leads the Collaborative and Interoperable Computing Group (CINCO). Her research interests lie in open service ecosystems, i.e., mature environments and methods for inter-enterprise collaboration for networked business. This involves alignment of infrastructure services for collaboration management, service-oriented software engineering, and governance at enterprise and ecosystem

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    Lea Kutvonen is an affiliate professor at the University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, where she leads the Collaborative and Interoperable Computing Group (CINCO). Her research interests lie in open service ecosystems, i.e., mature environments and methods for inter-enterprise collaboration for networked business. This involves alignment of infrastructure services for collaboration management, service-oriented software engineering, and governance at enterprise and ecosystem levels. She has been actively involved in the ODP standardization work, on the basic reference model and many of the function standards.

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