UNIFIED COMMERCE (UC) - National Retail Federation Commerce.pdf · executives expect to implement a unified commerce platform over the next ten years to consolidate key data elements,

UNIFIED COMMERCE (UC)

The Convergence of UnifiedPOS, IoT & BPM

• Relevance, Benefits and Definition

• An IoT-Centric UC Platform

• Digital Life Services (UC x IoT)

• Challenges & Opportunities

• Reference Architectures

• Semantic Interoperability

• Extensible Metadata Modeling

• Interoperable Data Services

• Interoperable User Experiences

• Legacy Support

• New ARTS Initiatives

UC Topics for Discussion

To simplify the technology environment, 86% of retail executives expect to implement a unified commerce platform over the next ten years to consolidate key data elements, business rules, and functionality that historically have lived in multiple systems.

In an effort to better serve the connected consumer, this impending refresh has prompted retailers to rethink traditional store-centric software, along with all consumer facing technology.

NRF Executive Research Report, October 2014

Building the Case for a Unified Commerce Platform

UC Outlook

UNIFIED COMMERCE PLATFORMS WILL BECOME THE STANDARD OVER TIME

UC Outlook

• Agility to respond to consumer demands

• Increased store associate productivity and customer engagement

• Transformative consumer experiences

• Ordering & POS from Any “Thing”and Order Fulfillment from/to Anywhere

• Reduction in middleware & integration costs

Benefits of a UC Model

“In omnichannel, you have multiple channels, but you

don’t have one piece of software, one version of

the truth: You have many versions of the truth. In

the unified commerce world, it’s all connected in

real time. I don’t just mean the web side, but the

mobile side, the web side and the store side—all in

real time.”

Ken Morris, Co-Founder

Boston Retail Partners

Unified vs Omni Channel


Each “band-aid”

represents time,

effort and $ to

get disparate

systems to work

seamlessly

together


An IoT-Centric UC PlatformBy 2020, more than 50 percent of all new

applications developed on PaaS (Platform

as a Service) will be IoT-centric, disrupting

conventional architecture practices.

IoT adoption will drive additional use of

PaaS to implement IoT-centric business

applications built around event-driven

architecture and IoT data, instead of

business applications built around

traditional master data.

Secure

Interoperable Extensible

Unified

Commerce

Unified

Events

Unified

Devices

IoT

centric

These IoT-centric business applications will drive a transformation in application design

practices that focus on real-time contextually rich decisions, event-analysis, lightweight

workflow, and broad access to Web-scale data.

Gartner Research

UC x IoT

An IoT-Centric UC Platform

Consumer-Facing “System of Systems”

Digital Life Services (UC x IoT)

Personal Store Home Public

(e.g. Mall)

Anywhere Ordering & POS

Requires Plug-and-Play Interoperability

To provide a transformative consumer experience requires taking the

technological gains of the past couple of decades and wrapping them

all up into one seamless, all-encompassing bundle of digital services.

These “system of system” services will provide the consumer with a

continuum of contextual Digital Life experiences that anticipate,

direct, and engage.


Let’s say you drive to a mall for a day’s shopping:

an automated car parking attendant recognizes your license

plate number

sees that it’s the tenth time you have parked here

so lets you in for free.

As you enter a store,

data sensors talking to your smartphone recognize that it’s your

birthday

and a store attendant hurries over with a glass of champagne.


Public

Store

The store attendant is also aware that you are returning an item

you purchased online which was too small;

although they don’t stock your size themselves, their

connected inventory management system has found it at a

nearby store,

and had it drop shipped (probably by drone) here just in time for

you to pick up as you pass by on your way to the lounge.


Public

Store

Store


1 2

4 3

Business to Machine (B2M) Commerce: Automated Home Replenishment

SmartMart.com

StoreHome


5

2 3

4

1

6

B2C/B2B Commerce: Automated Payment Processing

SmartMart.com

SmartBank.com

NFC, MQTT, CoAP, HTTP (REST, Web Socket)

Interoperable

Events PayloadPublic

Challenges & Opportunities

x2x Commerce

Collectively, these x2x Commerce scenarios can be addressed through

middleware and middlemen (integrators) which add to complexity and cost

or

they can be addressed thru a single, agile platform based on a unified process

and data model supporting semantic interoperability.

Key Challenges

• interoperability

• security

• quality of service

• data storage

ARTS is in an ideal position to address Semantic Interoperability through UNIFIED PROCESS AND DATA MODELS that incorporate COMMON commerce

semantics with SPECIFIC retail/POS semantics.

Challenges & Opportunities

Competitive Differentiators

• predictive/cognitive

analytics

• engaging,context-driven

consumer experiences

"When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there.“

Steve Jobs

Challenges & OpportunitiesAbstraction of the Application Layer

Challenges & OpportunitiesAbstraction of the Application Layer

Reference Architectures

Provide:

• Defined levels of abstraction

• A template solution composed of various technologies for a particular

domain (e.g. Retail or POS)

• A list of functions and interactions with each other and with functions

located outside of the scope of the reference architecture.

• A common vocabulary with which to discuss implementations


Benefits to Adopting an RA within an Organization

• Accelerates delivery through the re-use of an effective solution

• Provides a basis for governance to ensure consistency and applicability of

technology use

• Improves interoperability of the software systems by establishing a standard

solution and common mechanisms for information exchange

• Reduces development costs of software projects through the reuse of

common assets

• Improves communication inside the organization because stakeholders

share the same architectural mindset


Normalizing ARTS Artifact Vocabulary (proposed)

ODM Normalized UPOS

Entity Entity Device Category

Attribute Attribute Property

Connection or Session Control instance

Microservice Method

Microservice Logical device

Microservice or Connected Device Application

Common data service Service interface

Connected device Physical device

Machine Message Event


The Application Another Connected Device or microservice manipulates

the Physical Connected Device (the hardware unit or peripheral) by calling

the platform specific APIs Common Data Service which conform to the

UnifiedPOS standard. Some Connected Devices support more than one

device category Entity. For example, some POS Printers include a Cash

Drawer kickout, and some Bar Code Scanners include an integrated Scale.

UnifiedPOS Architecture

Normalizing ARTS Artifact Vocabulary (proposed)


Cloud Customer Architecture for IoT

Industrial Internet Reference Architecture

IoT Framework & Smart Home Devices

Healthcare Interoperability

Reference Architecture for Commerce

Retail Interoperability / Unified Commerce(Proposed)




Semantic interoperability is the ability of machines to exchange data with unambiguous, shared meaning.

Already plenty of standards at the communications level (e.g. HTTP, CoAP, MQTT, DDS)

Semantic standards are going to be critical in all verticals

Semantic Interoperability



The whole idea of connected devices is that they work with one

another to do things they can’t do alone. And here problems grow

even more acute. For a single device, it is good enough to know

whether the units are English or metric. For multiple devices all the

units of measure must align to perform even the simplest analytics.

It just won’t do if your Nest device is measuring your house

temperature in Fahrenheit and transmitting it to a utility company

that records temperatures in Celsius. This means that people and

organizations have to agree on how they will measure things.

Tom Davenport

MIT Center of Digital Business

Deloitte Analytics

Aligning Units of Measure

Extensible Metadata Modeling

Data Types

• UUID

• Binary

• Boolean

• DateTime

• String

• Currency

• Weight

• Temperature

• ,,,

“IoT-Centric” Entities“Registry” Entities

• Web Domains

• Email Addresses

• Postal Address

• Phone Numbers

• IP Addresses

• Currencies

• Unit of Measures

Entity-Relationship ModelODM


ENTITY dataset

UUID Master Entity Semantic Name

6F81... Device Belt

613D..

.

Device Cash Drawer

DAA5..

.

Device Check Scanner

FCB0... Device Coin Dispenser

A4BB..

.

Device Gate

D02B..

.

Device Line Display

114F... Device Light

300E..

.

Device Magnetic Stripe Reader

2E66..

.

Device POS Printer

ATTRIBUTE dataset

UUID Entity Semantic Name Data Type

87B5..

.

Belt

(6F81...)

Auto Stop Backward Yes/No

A658... Belt Auto Stop Backward Delay Time Integer

69A4... Belt Auto Stop Backward Item Count Integer

70AE... Belt Auto Stop Forward Yes/No

699D..

.

Belt Auto Stop Forward Delay Time Integer

POS Device Metadata


Developing a Controlled Vocabularyfor Entity and Attribute Names within a Retail Ontology

Controlled vocabulary schemes mandate the use of predefined,

authorized terms that have been preselected by the designers of the

schemes, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, which have no

such restriction

An ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and

interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a

particular domain of discourse. (e.g. Retail, Medical, Travel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_of_discourse


Top Level Domains as “Domains of Discourse”

A top-level domain (e.g. .com, .gov, .edu) recognizes a certain element

regarding the associated website, such as its objective (e.g. business,

government, education). Each TLD includes an independent registry

controlled by a specific organization, which is managed under the

guidance of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

(ICANN).


TLDs as Ontology Registries (proposed)

.city

.home

.com

Washing Machine

Gift Registry

Layaway

Hotel

Airline

Flight

Item

Customer Vendor

Order

Invoice Payment

Receipt Printer

DoorLight

Airport

Passenger

Patient

Doctor

Thermometer

Surgery

Vending

Machine

Motion Detector

Restaurant

Menu

Parking Meter

.POS.COM

SmartMart.com

SmartBank.com

.pos .pos

Interoperable Data Services


SmartMart.com

SmartBank.com

CLOUD COMPUTING

BIG DATA

& ANALYTICS

OData.org

via HTTP


SmartMart.com

INTERNET

OF

THINGS

via HTTP, MQTT,

AMQP, CoAP…


FOG COMPUTING

Little Data

& Analytics

via HTTP, MQTT,

AMQP, CoAP…


Microservices is an architectural style in

which large, complex software applications

are composed of one or more smaller

services. Each of these microservices

focuses on completing one task that

represents a small business capability.

These microservices can be developed in

any programming language. They

communicate with each other using

language-neutral protocols.

Calculate

Sales Tax

Schedule

Carrier Pickup

Send Customer

Notification

AGILE ORCHESTRATION THROUGH MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURE

(aka Modular BPM)

Calculate

Discounts

Create

Invoice

Process

PaymentRules Engine

(for Simple Event Processing)

Interoperable User Experiences

Remote Display Experience

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/docs/remotedisplay


Control Panel Service

• After paring a smart phone to a refrigerator

• Smart phone requests the refrigerator’s portable Control App & Attribute values

• On receipt, it renders the Attributes on the display

• Freezer temperature Attribute changed on smart phone

• Change in the temperature is reported to refrigerator via Events

AppRequest

Events

App


Control Panel Service (proposed)

• After paring a smart phone to a vending machine

• Smart phone requests the vending machine’s portable Control App & Attribute values

• On receipt, it renders the Attributes on the display

• An Item selection attribute is activated on the smart phone

• The activation is reported to vending machine via Events

AppRequest

Events

App


Control Panel Service (proposed)

• After paring a smart phone to a beacon to obtain a URL

• Smart phone requests portable Contextual App from a web server

• On receipt, it renders the app on the smart phone display

• User interactions are reported to the web server via Events

AppRequest

Events

App

SmartMart

.POS

http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/mzrjxv-beacon.0117resized.gif

Legacy Support

• Support UnifiedPOS and POSLog through Drivers (microservices)

that dynamically generate compatible machine messages in XML

• Support ODM through Mappings to Metadata Model

UPOS/POSlog

XML

Payload

Driver

(microservice)

Metadata

ModelODM

Reference Architecture (UC x IoT)

• Define an IoT-centric Metadata Model that unifies

ODM, UPOS, and BPM to support Unified Commerce

and semantic interoperability

• Define UC-related use cases as event-driven processes

implemented as microservices (incl. rules engine)

• Normalize UnifiedPOS to IoT architecture and

encompass all POS devices in any environment (e.g.

vending machines)

New ARTS Initiatives

Entity

Object

Identifier Attribute

Reference Implementation (UC x IoT)

• Used as a definitive interpretation for the RA

• Developed concurrently with the RA

• Verifies that RA is implementable

• Serves as a Gold Standard against which other implementations can be measured

• Demonstrated in proposed “NRF Labs” or affiliate lab (e.g. westfieldlabs.com) with compatible devices

• Example: IoTivity is the reference implementation for the OIC specification under Apache open source license


https://vimeo.com/167320397


.POS

Metadata Repositories

• Separate cloud-based repositories from “common commerce” and “POS” metadata

• “POS” metadata including POS device and POS-specific transaction entities (e.g. Layaway, Rain Check)

• Based on the metadata model in the RA

• Utilize the database version of ODM as the foundation

• Explore .POS top-level domain in collaboration with Verisign’s .COM domain

Use Case Repository


Secure

Interoperable Extensible

Unified

Commerce

Unified

Events

Unified

Devices

IoT

centric

Order Management

Service Oriented

Architecture

POSLog

Notification

Events (NEAR)

Mobile

Integration

Location

Digital Receipt

Data

Warehouse

UnifiedPOS

Synchronization

Data Model

E-Commerce

Business Process

Modeling (BPM)

Validate full-visionextensibility of RA thru broad array of ARTS use cases

rather than narrow vision from point and single-domain use cases (e.g. smarthome)

Thank You

Doug Migliori

President

ControlBEAM

+1 949.203-BEAM

[email protected]

Dennis J. Gerson, Ph.D.

Technical Advisor

IBM Distinguished Engineer

Member, IBM Academy of Technology

[email protected]

UNIFIED COMMERCE (UC) - National Retail Federation Commerce.pdf · executives expect to implement a unified commerce platform over the next ten years to consolidate key data elements,

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