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Services Science and Enterprise : A Happy Marriage

Prof. Dimitri Konstantas

Vice-Dean

Institute of Services Science

Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics

Services Today

Very simple for the users

BUT

Very complex for the managers

Some Facts• Services represent between 70% and 80% of the European and

Swiss economy !!• We do not quite understand how to measure the productivity of

those that produce services• The boundaries between production and distribution are fuzzy• The value of the services is fuzzy• The « products » are changing constantly• The user contributes in the production and even the design of a

service

What is the problem with today's enterprises?

• New models are appearing– Software as a Service, storage as a service, cloud computing

• Global interactions in a global economy – Your competitor is at the other side of the planet

• Niche markets become the driving force for an enterprise– The Long tail market

• Customer driven business – If you don't do it, your competitor will

Ever increasing technological complexity

Enterprises need to offer service BUT services are difficult to both specify and maintain:

• Scale – Highly complex and ambitious artefacts (and things are getting worst every day!!)

• Integration – need to take into account and master "academic disciplines" ranging from social sciences to mathematics, engineering and economics (but who understands all that?)

• Environment - many of the systems operate in a world of uncertain and shifting policy, economics and legislation

• Communications - these large scale systems and not understood in their totality, leading to a poor understanding on key decisions (process, expectations, financial policy…)

The Human factor

• Senior management:– Don't understand technologies– Can be conservative– More comfortable with conventional business relations with

vendors– May be over-cautious about being sued

• Users:– Can be conservative and many don't understand

technologies– Those that do may use the technologies in dangerous

ways– Others may have high expectations (computer games!)

So, what do we need? New Principles!!

• A change in culture• Be more open • Revisit Acceptable Use Policies – should not be a

control mechanism• Develop more sophisticated models for standards,

accessibility, open source, …• Integrating IT Policies With Institutional Policies • Holistic or blended approach - flexibility in implementation

Services Sciencecan be the solution

The enterprise today The Service Science based enterprise

Service Science based enterprise system characteristics

• Loosely coupled: minimizes dependencies between services.• Contractual: adhere to agreement on service descriptions.• Autonomous: control the business logic they encapsulate.• Abstract: hide the business logic from the service consumers• Reusable: divide business logic into reusable services.• Composable: facilitate the assembly of composite services.• Stateless: minimize retained information specific to an activity.• Discoverable: self-described so that they can be found and

assessed.

Services Science advantages for the enterprise

• Vendor diversity• Intrinsic interoperability• Inherent reusability• Extensibility• Organizational agility• Incremental implementation

And from the technical point of view• Applications can be exposed easily to diverse clients• Existing services can be easily reused• New applications can be created or modified

– the marginal cost of creating the n-th application is zero, as all of the software required already exists to satisfy the requirements of other applications

Why SS Makes Sense: More Business Benefits

• Business people understand services– So IT people can talk with them more easily

• Application integration becomes cheaper and faster– Which makes implementing business processes easier

• Business processes can more easily be changed or replaced – Because they’re built from autonomous services with well-

defined interfaces

Some Risks

• Does it make sense to build most new apps in a service-oriented style?– Yes: there are exceptions, however

• Which are the "component services"?– Exposing the right services is harder

• Can service-oriented apps perform?– Yes: perhaps 10-15% of people have performance problems

today (typically caused by bad design or very high load on a service)

• Can the organizational challenges be overcome?– The real challenges are human, not technical

The way towards a Service Science enterprise

• Maturity Models• Open Group –OSIMM• Gartner Group SOA

Maturity Model• SONIC vendor group

SOA Maturity Model• …

An Early Example: Credit Suisse

Credit Suisse: Services Growth

1999 2000 2001 2003

Exposed business services

35 173 500 800

Front-end applications

5 21 50+ 150+

Users 800 9.000 100.000 100.000+

Credit Suisse: What They Learned

• Challenges:– An expensive project

• Return on Investment (ROI) took time to materialize

– Performance wasn’t good initially– Security and management were custom– Business units resisted sharing their services; they were

“encouraged”• Benefits:

– Faster application development• 75-80% of required services already available

– Savings of several million dollars a year

The Institute of Services Science@ University of Geneva

• Mission : Lead research in the domain of Services Science in close collaboration with the industry.

• Main Activities– 13 research projects (EU/Cost/Swiss funding), – a doctoral school– 3 continuous education programs– a yearly running conference on services science, – participation to different think groups and innovation and creative

workshops.

• Personnel– 27 research and technical collaborators

Overview of the R&D activities of ISS• Engineering of services and Information systems• Security of services and management of security policies• Interoperation and collaboration of distributed

autonomous services• Future internet based services

How to create a service, what are the components, the technical constrains, the technical needs?

How to interconnect globally available services? What are the economic issues in operating a service? What are the social implications of a service? What is the user feedback?

Some examples of R&D industry collaboration projects

• DELIISS project (EU FP7)Designing Lifelong Learning for Innovation in Information Services

• Large-scale adaptive services– SAPERE (EU FP7)

Self-Aware Pervasive Service Ecosystems

• Services for Seniors– TRAINUTRI (AAL)

TRAINing and NUTRItion senior social platform

– WayFiS (AAL)

Way Finding Seniors

• Mobile Services– GTA (Eurostars)

Global Tourist Assistance Services– ULOOP (EU FP7)

User-centric Wireless Local Loop– PERIMETER (EU FP7)

User-centric paradigm for seamless mobility in future Internet

Some examples of Collaboration

Strong collaboration with institutes and companies in Switzerland and abroad– IBM, ArxIT SA, NetUnion Sarl, Banque Pictet, Vigisense SA, …– Ville de Geneve, ville de Carouge, CTI …– ILO, ITU, UN …– Several Universities in the Service Science domain

• SSAIE Summer School,

• Creation and study of products and services• Development of R&D projects• Think Group on Data Protection

Education related to the ISS• Bachelor in « systèmes d’Information et Sciences des

Services » (180 credits / 3 years)• Master in « Management, orientation Information

Systems and Services Science » (120 credits / 2 years)• PhD in Information Systems• Continuous education

– MATIS - Management and Technologies of Information Systems– InfoSec - Information Security– EMISS – Executive Master in Services Science

Future and directions• The ISS will come officially to life in January 1st 2011

• Targets for 2011 – Consolidate and expand the collaboration with the industry – Expand the education offer and include new areas in the domain

of Services Science– Federate with other research institutes in the domain – Become a reference point for research in Services Science

http://iss.unige.ch