does service composition suffice to define business contracts for it services in networked...
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Does service composition suffice to define business contracts for IT services in Networked organizations. Authors: Antonella longo ; Mario A. Bochicchio ; Barbara Livieri Presenting author : Barbara Livieri ( [email protected] ). Agenda. Context Objectives Our experience - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
DOES SERVICE COMPOSITION SUFFICE TO DEFINE BUSINESS CONTRACTS FOR IT SERVICES IN NETWORKED ORGANIZATIONSAUTHORS: ANTONELLA LONGO; MARIO A. BOCHICCHIO;BARBARA LIVIERI
PRESENTING AUTHOR: BARBARA LIVIERI ([email protected])
AGENDA
1) Context2) Objectives3) Our experience
a) Scenariob) Issues
4) Related works5) Service composition
a) Contractual Issues related to the feasibility of service compositionb) Contractual Issues related to service composition management
6) Conclusions and future works
CONTEXT
Service are becoming a pervasive element in the current economic scenario
Companies all over the world are interconnected with each other by service networks
The delivery of IT services (especially SaaS) to final customers requires the description of the service in end-to-end perspective, IT manager should be able to
map and monitor the whole IT service chain from the data center to the final user
end-to-end measurement of services
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
CONTEXT
IT Manager
Provider 1
Provider 2
Provider (…)
Provider n
Trade-off: cost or quality?
New services for final usersIT Department
static documents, signed by humans and enforced by law
• legal aspects;• terms:• obligations;• SLA• QoS• all relevant
functional and non-functional properties of the service
electronic documents orchestrating the interplay of human and automatic agents belonging to networked organizations
contract is subjected to constraints coming from the underpinning contracts
evaluation of inter-organizational aspects
OBJECTIVES
Obj: discuss some relevant open issues not covered by current Contract Management approaches and tools.
feasibility of service composition
how service levels limit and shape technical, legal and organizational aspects related to the contract of the composed service.
Service compositio
n
Feasibility Service levels
Legal aspects
Technical aspects
Organizational aspects
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
OUR EXPERIENCE - SCENARIO
MobEnt IT Service Provider7 year contracts
SLAs for availability and performance• 300 applications developed
in 30 years • wide variety of
architectures, technologies and domains
Evolution
IT Organizati
on
• more and more involved in the definition of business performance related to online business services;
• business services are conceived and designed as a composition of lower level services provided through different technological platforms
IT hardware and software
managersIT service managers
Temporary Group of Companies
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
OUR EXPERIENCE - ISSUES
Common issues Different languages and goals of IT
operators and business ones and they don’t interact with each other
Issues related to composed services
“How” to define and evaluate the target service levels related to component services, in order to attain a given Service Level (SL) for the business service;
Business Service
SLComponent services
SL1 SL2 … SLn
Accountability: which are the responsibilities, the penalties and the obligations for each operator?
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
RELATED WORKS Works on CM and SLM usually
take into account only automated agents in SOAs
nobody has still investigated how to model service chains taking into account stakeholders perspectives
In research literature the composition of services and the composition of contracts is largely investigated, but we haven’t found references about the issues of composing service level agreements, as defined in IT delivery contracts. We have also experienced that these issues are critical in enforcing service delivery contracts.Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October
28th – 31st
Currently available CM and SLM methodologies are not sufficient as tools for effectively supporting large organizations in defining and managing contracts for online IT services and for their composition.
Not sufficient for automated SLA extraction and composition
because of: lack of stackeholders perspetives Lack of strategic and business aspects
Automated Agents
SOAs
SERVICE COMPOSITIONThe contractual issues that we are going to discuss regard both the feasibility analysis of
service level composition the aspects of service level
composition management in service contract enactment
We can distinguish two sets of issues some are blocking for service
level composition others must be checked but are
not blocking since they may produce only empty sets
Define service catalogue and service
accountability
Define service composition topology
Assess service level metrics and
measurement units
Assess service hours and calendar
Compare measurement period
Compare contact period
Define monitoring plan
Collect monitoring data
Apply service level composition rules
Analyze and report service levels of
composed services
Feasibility analysis of service level composition
Service level composition management
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Define service catalogue and service
accountability
Define service composition topology
Assess service level metrics and
measurement units
Assess service hours and calendar
Compare measurement period
Compare contact period
Define monitoring plan
Collect monitoring data
Apply service level composition rules
Analyze and report service levels of
composed services
Feasibility analysis of service level composition
Service level composition managementCONTRAC
TUAL ISSUES RELATED TO THE FEASIBILITY OF SERVICE COMPOSITION
SERVICE DEFINITION AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Services
Line of business
IT operations
Risk managem
ent
Contract managem
ent
Line of business
Service description
IT operation
s
IT infrastruct
ure
IT application
s
Risk manage
ment
Risks
Contract manage
ment
Contract
In order to compose services and to evaluate resulting SLs with related constraints, it is necessary to model them at the same level of abstraction
Service Catalog
Accountability is necessary in order to identify who manages the service and related service levels. Accountability imposes that all services deployed (regardless whether by human, machine or software) have the obligation to accept responsibility or to account for their actions.
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Define service catalogue and service
accountability
Define service composition topology
Assess service level metrics and
measurement units
Assess service hours and calendar
Compare measurement period
Compare contact period
Define monitoring plan
Collect monitoring data
Apply service level composition rules
Analyze and report service levels of
composed services
Feasibility analysis of service level composition
Service level composition managementCONTRAC
TUAL ISSUES RELATED TO THE FEASIBILITY OF SERVICE COMPOSITION
SERVICE COMPOSITION TOPOLOGY
According to the topology services are composed and service level specifications are calculated differently
Service 11
Node 10
Node 9Service
5Service
4
Node 8Service
1
Node 7Service
2Service
3
Service 6
Sequ
enti
al str
uctu
re
Parallel
structureConditional structure
Loop
structure
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Define service catalogue and service
accountability
Define service composition topology
Assess service level metrics and
measurement units
Assess service hours and calendar
Compare measurement period
Compare contact period
Define monitoring plan
Collect monitoring data
Apply service level composition rules
Analyze and report service levels of
composed services
Feasibility analysis of service level composition
Service level composition managementCONTRAC
TUAL ISSUES RELATED TO THE FEASIBILITY OF SERVICE COMPOSITION
Service visibility inside contracts
The decision is essential for contract owners in order to estimate the associated business risks of the composed service
SL metrics and measurement units
Values of SLAs are based on metrics;
In service composition, resulting service levels depend on composing service levels.
The necessary conditions for comparing them are that the metric is the same and the measurement units are compatible (e.g. measures must be related to time, or all measures must be percentages).
Black box: no internal details White
box: internal details fully exposed
Gray box: internal details partially exposed
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Define service catalogue and service
accountability
Define service composition topology
Assess service level metrics and
measurement units
Assess service hours and calendar
Compare measurement period
Compare contact period
Define monitoring plan
Collect monitoring data
Apply service level composition rules
Analyze and report service levels of
composed services
Feasibility analysis of service level composition
Service level composition managementCONTRAC
TUAL ISSUES RELATED TO THE FEASIBILITY OF SERVICE COMPOSITION
SERVICE HOURS AND CALENDAR
Example In the composition of services the
time window (and the service calendar) in which the composed service is guaranteed depends on the composing services. It defines the time and calendar the composed service level is guaranteed.
It depends on the topology and the homogeneity of services
If the composed service has an empty guaranteed window, the Service cannot be guaranteed
Service B
7 am – 11 pm
Service A
8 am – 8 pm
M
M
T
T
W
W
T
T
F
F
S
S
S
S
If C = (A in parallel with B) and (A and B are homogeneous):
If C = (A in parallel with B) and (A and B are heterogeneous):
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Define service catalogue and service
accountability
Define service composition topology
Assess service level metrics and
measurement units
Assess service hours and calendar
Compare measurement period
Compare contact period
Define monitoring plan
Collect monitoring data
Apply service level composition rules
Analyze and report service levels of
composed services
Feasibility analysis of service level composition
Service level composition managementCONTRAC
TUAL ISSUES RELATED TO THE FEASIBILITY OF SERVICE COMPOSITION
CONTRACTUAL DURATION AND MEASUREMENT PERIOD
Contractual duration Services are guaranteed in the
contractual duration. It means that the contractual duration of the composed service is constrained by the durations of the component services
Measurement period Each component service within
the SLA owns a specific measurement period.
The measurement period of the composed service is constrained by the corresponding component services.
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Measurement period
MP of CS1
MP of CS2 …
MP of CSn
MEASUREMENT PERIOD
If the component services starts simultaneously, it is generally the least common multiple (l.c.m.) of each component’s measurement period
Otherwise initially the two measurements periods will be out of phase and need to be aligned
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Define service catalogue and service
accountability
Define service composition topology
Assess service level metrics and
measurement units
Assess service hours and calendar
Compare measurement period
Compare contact period
Define monitoring plan
Collect monitoring data
Apply service level composition rules
Analyze and report service levels of
composed services
Feasibility analysis of service level composition
Service level composition managementCONTRAC
TUAL ISSUES RELATED TO SERVICE COMPOSITION MANAGEMENT
MONITORING PLANS
It is necessary to develop and implement an appropriate monitoring plan, conducting representative sampling, and to report the results. map the relationships
between composing and composed services.
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
MONITORING PLANS
The monitoring plan must identify and provide information about each monitoring point. Each monitoring point must be located on the topology and labeled. The same points will identify monitoring points both for composing and composed
services.
Check point 1 Check point
2
Check point 3
CONTRACTUAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Context definition according to different
contexts, contract lifecycle can match different patterns and contract contents can vary (e.g., SaaS in Next Generation Networks, Cloud service contracts)
Domain definition As also drawn in the
perspectives of service contracts must be domain specific in order to better fit specific situations of a domain in real world practice. Such service contracts features are usually shared as reusable professional knowledge within a specific domain.
Since contracts are made up of subject, parties, terms and conditions, at least, it is necessary that even the composition of terms and conditions must be related.
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
Contribution: the paper explores how service composition, with specific focus on service levels, shapes technical, legal and organizational aspects related to the contract of the composed service and discusses the feasibility of the composition according to different aspects.
Conclusion: it is necessary to integrate aspects related to service levels design and management in contract management process in order to consider constraints and features related to service composition, which are fundamental in contract enactment and further enforcement. In this way issues like sustainability and feasibility of service contracts could be partly routed. An approach and tools encapsulating these topics could be very effective for several stakeholders involved in SLM and CM processes and could be useful for what if analysis, assessment for guaranteeing certain service level and sensitivity analysis.
Further works: development of: a methodology for the integration of technical, commercial, strategic and contractual
elements in SLA definition a platform supporting the composition of service levels, with attention to the constraints
they will create at contractual level.
Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st
Thank you!