Wilfrid Utz

Business Process as a Service: Model Based Business and IT Cloud Alignment as a Cloud Offering

Cloud computing proved to offer flexible IT solutions. Although large enterprises may benefit from this technology, SMEs are falling behind in cloud usage due to missing IT-competence and hence lose the ability to efficiently adapt their IT to their business needs. This paper introduces the project idea of the H2020 project Cloud Socket, by elaborating the idea of Business Processes as a Service (BPaaS), where concept models and semantics are applied to align business processes with Cloud deployed workflows. Four architectural building blocks are pro-posed for (i) design, (ii) allocation, (iii) execution and (iv) evaluation are discussed before providing and outlook.

Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)

Cloud computing proved to offer flexible IT solutions. Although large enterprises may benefit from this technology by educating their IT departments, SMEs are dramatically falling behind in cloud usage and hence lose the ability to efficiently adapt their IT to their business needs. This paper introduces the project idea of the H2020 project CloudSocket, by elaborating the idea of Business Processes as a Service, where concept models and semantics are applied to align business processes with Cloud deployed workflows. Four architectural building blocks proposed for (i) design, (ii) allocation, (iii) execution and (iv) evaluation are discussed before providing and outlook.

Business Episodes and Workflow Integration: A Use Case in LD-CAST

The integration of the business and technical views allows domain experts from the business view to take control over the whole process of service delivery (including the generation of the executable workflows) to the end users. The integration approach of business and technical views presented in this paper is supported by semi-automatic generation of ontology from the modeled business episodes. This approach is evaluated and presented through the use case example from the LD-CAST project (FP6-ICT-26919).

A Toolbox Supporting Agile Modelling Method Engineering: ADOxx.org Modelling Method Conceptualization Environment

The importance of Modelling Method Engineering is equally rising with the importance of domain specific modelling methods and individual modelling approaches. In order to capture the most relevant semantic primitives that address domain specifics needs, it is necessary to involve both, method engineers as well as domain experts. Due to complexity of conceptualization of a modelling method and development of regarding modelling tool, there is a need of a guideline and corresponding tools supporting actors with different background along this complex process. Based on practical experience in business, more than twenty EU projects and other research initiatives, this paper introduces a toolbox to support the conceptualization of a modelling method. The realized toolbox is introduced and evaluated by two EU-funded research projects in the domain of e-learning and cloud computing as well as additionally by an in-house development project in the area of decision modelling extensions. The paper discusses the evaluation results and derived outlooks.

Capturing Learning Activities in Heterogeneous Environments: A Model-Based Approach for Data Marshalling

The paper aims for a technological contribution to online learning research and especially learning analytics by providing insights on the data marshalling and data orchestration approach developed in the context of the NEXT-TELL project. The project concentrates on how conceptual modelling can be utilized to describe ICT enhanced assessment methods independently of a concrete learning platform and on deploying these methods using various technologies and runtime environments.

Context-Free and Context-Dependent Service Models Based on ”Role Model” Concept for Utilizing Cultural Aspects

Today’s service economy experiences a bi-polarization: a few large organizations are capable to offer services that scale and are applicable on a global market (as context-free services) while a plethora of small organizations provide their services locally due to the contextual dependencies of their offerings (as context-dependent services). As a future challenge and next generation of service offerings we investigate in this paper how context-dependent services can scale-up to a global market while maintaining the domestic and cultural aspects they embody. We propose the ”role-model” concept to overcome the limitation in integrating aspects from both types. The concept is evaluated by analysing the actual service workflows of two representative cases using a common modelling approach realized on the ADOxx meta-modelling platform.

Service Modeling: A Model Based Approach for Business and It Alignment

Service modeling became important in the recent years, due to successful uptake of the SOA based environments and business models, pushed forward by overall growth of the service sector as a leading part of the worldwide economy. Service modeling gained importance based on the requirement to better understand, define and control the services as basic building blocks of the SOA based environments. This paper proposes a model driven approach on how the Business and IT alignment in the service life cycle can be supported by introducing knowledge technologies for service models. The model based approach is presented by first introducing the conceptual research challenges for integrated modeling methods, followed by the overview of the prototypic implementation of the service modeling platform and concludes with a demonstration in the HPC-based HLRS use case.

Design Semantics on Accessibility in Unstructured Data Environments

In the dynamic world of the internet and web service, the need to access data in a transparent and flexible way becomes increasingly important. Technological advances on infrastructure level allow us to store and process larger volumes of data, with a higher complexity/variety and modification speed on structure as well as content level close to real-time. In this paper, the concept of “Data Service” is introduced as a novel methodology to match the data needs of services with existing, unstructured data environments. The approach is conceptualized as a domain-independent modeling method enabling developers to semantically design access mechanisms and algorithms, combine available data services according to functionality requirements and enrich retrieved data with metadata and provenance information.

Development of an Evaluation Approach for Customer Service Interaction Models

In today’s service economy, the evaluation of interaction between service providers and different consumer segments/target groups is an important topic. In context-sensitive settings, the service provider adapts the interaction with the consumer by selecting a fitting design pattern, also including mechanisms for validation and evaluation. In current service evaluation models, the extraction of dynamic characteristics of consumers poses a challenge, as simplification of methods for externalization of patterns is needed to enable an improved understanding of consumer types. The paper at hand aims for a contribution on visualization of the service interaction for each consumer type/pattern supported. A prototypical visualization approach has been implemented using meta-modelling concepts and technologies as an realization environment, validated in case studies from the food service industry.

Modeling Learning Data for Feedback and Assessment

This chapter describes the application of metamodeling concepts to the case of modeling formative assessment methods and their deployment. It builds on Evidence-Centred Assessment Design (ECD) as the approach to conceptualizing the process of assessment design. We describe how we extended ECD by expressing its logic with concepts from metamodeling, and how we developed tool support for the modeling as well as the deployment step in the context of the NEXT-TELL project: the ADVISOR modeling toolkit. To illustrate how this platform-independent approach to assessment design can be utilized to address typical assessment challenges, examples from language learning are provided.