Justus Bogner

Towards Integrating Microservices with Adaptable Enterprise Architecture

IT environments that consist of a very large number of rather small structures like microservices, Internet of Things (IoT) components, or mobility systems are emerging to support flexible and agile products and services in the age of digital transformation. Biological metaphors of living and adaptable ecosystems with service-oriented enterprise architectures provide the foundation for self-optimizing, resilient run- time environments and distributed information systems. We are extending Enterprise Architecture (EA) methodologies and models that cover a high degree of heterogeneity and distribution to support the digital transformation and related information systems with micro-granular architectures. Our aim is to support flexibility and agile transformation for both IT and business capabilities within adaptable digital enterprise architectures. The present research paper investigates mechanisms for integrating Microservice Architectures (MSA) by extending original enterprise architecture reference models with elements for more flexible architectural metamodels and EA-mini-descriptions.

Decision-Controlled Digitization Architecture for Internet of Things and Microservices

Digitization of societies changes the way we live, work, learn, communicate, and collaborate. In the age of digital transformation IT environments with a large number of rather small structures like Internet of Things (IoT), Microservices, or mobility systems are emerging to support flexible and agile digitized products and services. Adaptable ecosystems with service-oriented enterprise architectures are the foundation for self-optimizing, resilient run-time environments and distributed information systems. The resulting business disruptions affect almost all new information processes and systems in the context of digitization. Our aim are more flexible and agile transformations of both business and information technology domains with more flexible enterprise information systems through adaptation and evolution of digital enterprise architectures. The present research paper investigates mechanisms for decision-controlled digitization architectures for Internet of Things and Microservices by evolving enterprise architecture reference models and state of the art elements for architectural engineering for micro-granular systems.

Multi-Perspective Decision Management for Digitization Architecture and Governance

The Internet of Things, Enterprise Social Networks, Adaptive Case Management, Mobility S ystems, Analytics for Big Data, and Cloudenvironments are emerging to support smart connected i.e. digital products and services and the digital transformation. Biological metaphors of living and adaptable ecosystems provide the logical foundation for self- optimizing and resilient run-time environments for intelligent business services and related distributed information systems with service-oriented digitization architectures. We are investigatingmechanismsforflexibleadaptationandevolution of information systems with digital architecture in the context of the ongoing digital transformation. Our aim is to support flexibility and agile transformation for both business and related information systems through adaptation and dynamical evolution of their digital architectures. The present research paper investigates mechanisms of decision analytics for digitization architectures, putting a spotlight to Internet of Things architectures, by extending original enterprise architecture reference models with digitization architectures andtheirmulti- perspective architectural decision management.

Multi-perspective Digitization Architecture for the Internet of Things

Social networks, smart portable devices, Internet of Things (IoT) on base of technologies like analytics for big data and cloud services are emerging to support flexible connected products and agile services as the new wave of digital transformation. Biological metaphors of living and adaptable ecosystems with service-oriented enterprise architectures provide the foundation for self-optimizing and resilient run-time environments for intelligent business services and related distributed information systems. We are extending Enterprise Architecture (EA) with mechanisms for flexible adaptation and evolution of information systems having distributed IoT and other micro-granular digital architecture to support next digitization products, services, and processes. Our aim is to support flexibility and agile transformation for both IT and business capabilities through adaptive digital enterprise architectures. The present research paper investigates additionally decision mechanisms in the context of multi-perspective explorations of enterprise services and Internet of Things architectures by extending original enterprise architecture reference models with state of art elements for architectural engineering and digitization.

Towards a practical maintainability quality model for service-and microservice-based systems

Although current literature mentions a lot of different metrics related to the maintainability of Service-based Systems (SBSs), there is no comprehensive quality model (QM) with automatic evaluation and practical focus. To fill this gap, we propose a Maintainability Model for Services (MM4S), a layered maintainability QM consisting of Service Properties (SPs) related with automatically collectable Service Metrics (SMs). This research artifact created within an ongoing Design Science Research (DSR) project is the first version ready for detailed evaluation and critical feedback. The goal of MM4S is to serve as a simple and practical tool for basic maintainability estimation and control in the context of SBSs and their specialization Microservice-based Systems (μSBSs).

Automatically measuring the maintainability of service- and microservice-based systems: a literature review

In a time of digital transformation, the ability to quickly and efficiently adapt software systems to changed business requirements becomes more important than ever. Measuring the maintainability of software is therefore crucial for the long-term management of such products. With Service-based Systems (SBSs) being a very important form of enterprise software, we present a holistic overview of such metrics specifically designed for this type of system, since traditional metrics - e.g. object-oriented ones - are not fully applicable in this case. The selected metric candidates from the literature review were mapped to 4 dominant design properties: size, complexity, coupling, and cohesion. Microservice-based Systems (μSBSs) emerge as an agile and fine-grained variant of SBSs. While the majority of identified metrics are also applicable to this specialization (with some limitations), the large number of services in combination with technological heterogeneity and decentralization of control significantly impacts automatic metric collection in such a system. Our research therefore suggest that specialized tool support is required to guarantee the practical applicability of the presented metrics to μSBSs.

Software Evolution for Digital Transformation.

In current times, a lot of new business opportunities appeared using the potential of the Internet and related digital technologies, like Internet of Things, services computing, cloud computing, big data with analytics, mobile systems, collaboration networks, and cyber physical systems. Enterprises are presently transforming their strategy, culture, processes, and their information systems to become more digital. The digital transformation deeply disrupts existing enterprises and economies. Digitization fosters the development of IT environments with many rather small and distributed structures, like Internet of Things. This has a strong impact for architecting digital services and products. The change from a closed-world modeling perspective to more flexible open-world and living software and system architectures defines the moving context for adaptable and evolutionary software approaches, which are essential to enable the digital transformation. In this paper, we are putting a spotlight to service-oriented software evolution to support the digital transformation with micro-granular digital architectures for digital services and products.

Limiting technical debt with maintainability assurance: an industry survey on used techniques and differences with service- and microservice-based systems

Maintainability assurance techniques are used to control this quality attribute and limit the accumulation of potentially unknown technical debt. Since the industry state of practice and especially the handling of Service-and Microservice-Based Systems in this regard are not well covered in scientific literature, we created a survey to gather evidence for a) used processes, tools, and metrics in the industry, b) maintainability-related treatment of systems based on service-orientation, and c) influences on developer satisfaction w.r.t. maintainability. 60 software professionals responded to our online questionnaire. The results indicate that using explicit and systematic techniques has benefits for maintainability. The more sophisticated the applied methods the more satisfied participants were with the maintainability of their software while no link to a hindrance in productivity could be established. Other important findings were the absence of architecture-level evolvability control mechanisms as well as a significant neglect of service-oriented particularities for quality assurance. The results suggest that industry has to improve its quality control in these regards to avoid problems with long-living service-based software systems.

Decision-Oriented Composition Architecture for Digital Transformation

Enterprises are presently transforming their strategy, culture, processes, and their information systems to become more digital. The digital transformation deeply disrupts existing enterprises and economies. Digitization fosters the development of IT systems with many rather small and distributed structures, like Internet of Things or mobile systems. Since years a lot of new business opportunities appeared using the potential of the Internet and related digital technologies, like Internet of Things, services computing, cloud computing, big data with analytics, mobile systems, collaboration networks, and cyber physical systems. This has a strong impact for architecting digital services and products. The change from a closed-world modeling perspective to more flexible open-world composition and evolution of system architectures defines the moving context for adaptable systems, which are essential to enable the digital transformation. In this paper, we are focusing on a decision-oriented architectural composition approach to support the transformation for digital services and products.

Decision Management for Micro-Granular Digital Architecture

Digitization fosters the development of IT environments with many rather small structures, like Internet of Things (IoT), Microservices, or mobility systems. They are needed to support flexible and agile digitized products and services. The goal is to create service-oriented enterprise architectures (EA) that are self-optimizing and resilient. The present research paper investigates methods for decision-making concerning digitization architectures for Internet of Things and Microservices. They are based on evolving enterprise architecture reference models and state of the art elements for architectural engineering for micro-granular systems. Decision analytics in this field becomes increasingly complex and decision support, particularly for the development and evolution of sustainable enterprise architectures, is sorely needed. The challenging of the decision processes can be supported with in a more flexible and intuitive way by an architecture management cockpit.