Business Service Semantics: Ontological Representation & Governance of Business Semantics in Compliant Service Networks

Business Service Semantics Ontological Representation & Governance of Business Semantics in Compliant Service Networks

Pieter De Leenheer, Jorge Cardoso, Carlos Pedrinaci

Thursday 7 February 13

Overview

• Analyse problems with conceptual (software / business) service modelling

• Set ontological and governance requirements for Business Service Semantics

• Proposal for an SDL-compliant upper model

• Application of the ontology in Flanders Research Information Space

• Implementation in Collibra Data Governance Center product

Thursday 7 February 13

The Problem of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA)• believed to be core enabling technology, however no large-scale adoption for our service economy

• a componential approach inspired by product innovation: “bill of materials” and “urban architecture”

➡ clever idea but with lack of appreciation of inherent traits of service co-production: variety, intangibility, and coopetition

• biased by the enterprise-centric vision, hence electronic business implementations:

• rely on hierarchy of functional components, i.e.: Web services for exchange of data and functionality

• enforce how to execute a certain business operation in a fixed pre-defined manner: time dependency and control flow

➡ good for automating EXECUTION but not for TRADING or INNOVATION

➡ ignores aspects related to the exchange of value: e.g., strategy, proposition, roles, resourcing, pricing, quality and (regulatory) compliance

• complement SOA with value abstraction level: declare knowledge about what the business domain constitutes in terms of assets and relationships that allows to reactively adapt its role in changing value propositions.

• Service-dominant marketing logic: ontological analysis of “service” as a perdurant (“action”), rather than an endurant (“object”)....

Norman & Ramirez (1993): “the key strategic task is the reconfiguration of roles and relationships among this constellation of actors in order to mobilise the creation of value in new forms and by new players.”

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The Problem with Business Modelling / Service Network Approaches

• dotted circles:

• process-based

• planning problem

• solid circles:

• value-based

• design problem

➡ slow tendency towards decentralised and automated approaches

➡ contamination of process-thinking in network-centric approaches

➡ tacit business semantics➡ no governance➡ Service Network Approaches

lonely at the top?

DesignNone Analysis MatchingBundling Composition Dynamic Composition

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ICT support:

Value Chain

(Porter, 1985)

BMO (Oster-walder, 2004)

e3value (Gordijn,

2002)

e3service (de

Kinderen, 2009)

Servigu-ration

(Baida, 2006)

Value Networks

(Allee, 2002)

REA (McCarthy,

1982)

GVP (Zlatev, 2007)

O-WSP (Omela-yenko, 2006)

(Razo-Zapata et

al., BUSITAL,

2010)

(Gordijn et al.,

HICCS, 2011)

(Razo-Zapata,

BUSITAL 2011)

Wiki-nomics

(Tapscott, 2008)

Digital Capital

(Tapscott, 2000)

VBC (Nakamura, 2006 )

(Traverso, 2004)

Dynami-CoS (Da

Silva, 2011)

u-Service (Lee, 2011)

CPC (Letia, 2008)

(Kohl-born, 2010)

(Becker, 2009)

Ontomat (Agarwal,

2004)

Service Architectu-res (Booth,

2004)

METEOR-S (2005)

SNN(Bitsaki, 2008)

Razo-Zapata, I.; De Leenheer, P.; Gordijn, J.; Akkermans, H. (2012) Service Network Approaches. In Barros, A.; Oberle, D. Handbook of Service Description: USDL and its Methods, Springer, pp. 45-74

Thursday 7 February 13

Service Value Networks Perspective

• service co- production, i.e. ”bundling”

• in function of well-articulated needs => a service is a function f : Needs -> SVNs

• reflects an acceptable trade-off between

• value proposition (to maximize short-term profit) and

• market accuracy (to minimize consumer sacrifice)

• evaluating other value aspects (quality and compliance) requires “business service domain” semantics that:

• provide intended - natural - interpretation of the “real world”: divergence/convergence

• makes common sense, hence is declarative and grounded in upper SDL ontology

• are agreed and shared by the right arrangement of roles and responsibilities (i.e., governance)

An Service Value Network is a complex system of peers that establish the necessary relationships to collectively produce (hence co-produce) value (in terms of a real-world service) for their environment (Razo-Zapata, De Leenheer, & Gordijn, 2011).

Business Semantics ManagementThursday 7 February 13

SDL-Compliant Upper-level Model

• inspired by Poels, FRISCO, Maglio

Operand Resource

Action

acted upon by / acting upon

Operant Resource

acting in / acted upon by Circumstance

guarded by / guarding

Composite Action

Elementary Action

part of / having part

ServiceService System

integrating / integrated by

providing / provided by

requiting / requited by

Actor role of / playing role of

"Operant In Action"

execution

value creation

governanceOperant

ResourceOperand Resource

Resource

Service System

IndividualOrganisation

part of / having part

controlled by / controlling

Competency

governance

Thursday 7 February 13

Flanders Research Information Spacehttp://www.researchportal.be/

• Boost innovation through• aggregating data and make it

publicly available• 19683 projects• 1976 organisations• 13982 researchers• ...

• multiple parties deliver• Enterprise Info. Mgt.

• SOA (Attira)• Business Semantics (EuroCRIS,

Collibra)• Business Artefacts (IBM Research,

Collibra)• CERIF standard• Linked Data Approaches

Thursday 7 February 13

Characteristics of the FRIS Ecosystem

•Participatory• Equally privileged• Act autonomously• Interdependence• Distributed

•Long Life Cycles•Governance Levels•Variability•Authentic Resources

© courtesy of G. Van Grootel, EWI

project mgt.funding programme mgt.

Thursday 7 February 13

FRIS Ontology Instantiation

Organisation

Speech Community

"VUB"

Semantic Community"FRIS"

controlling / controlled by

having part / part ofIndividual: "John"having part / part of

Vocabulary "Project"

Service: "Define Project

Vocabulary"

providing / provided by

acted upon by / acting upon

acting in /acted upon by

Actor: "Business Steward"

playing role of / role of

"Individual in Service"

Service System

Operand Resource

providing / provided by

controlling / controlled by

Concept "Project"

expressed by / expressing

Circumstance: "Define Proposal

Vocabulary Ended"guarded by / guarding

Thursday 7 February 13

Data Governance Center

Thursday 7 February 13

Further Reading

• SDL-compliant upper-level model highlighting extension points for

• value creation: Razo-Zapata, I.; De Leenheer, P.; Gordijn, J.; Akkermans, H. (2012) Fuzzy Verification of Service Value Networks. In Proc. of the International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2012), Springer LNCS 7328, pp. 95-110

• execution: Limonad, L.; De Leenheer, P.; Linehan, M.; Hull, R.; Vaculín, R. (2012) Ontology of Dynamic Entities. In Proc. of 31st International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2012), LNCS, Springer

• more on FRIS: Debruyne, C.; De Leenheer, P. (2012) Insights in Business Semantics Management: Case Studies drawn from the Flemish Public Administration. In Aufaure, M.-A.; Zimanyí, E. (eds.) Handbook for the Second European Business Intelligence Summer School (eBISS 2012), LNBIP, Springer

• can we automatically reconfigure Actor role played by Operant that acts in a Services in response to quality or compliance issues ?

• De Leenheer, P. and Debruyne, C. (2009) Towards Social Performance Indicators for Community-based Ontology Evolution. In Proc. of ISWC Workshop on Collaborative Construction, Management and Linking of Structured Knowledge (CK2009)

Thursday 7 February 13