enterprise interoperability center (eic)

Enterprise Interoperability Center (EIC)

ATHENA Final ReviewMarch 27.-29. 2007Funchal, Portugal

Petra Frenzel, SAP

eic Enterprise Interoperability Centre 2

Outline

EIC todayEIC in the standardisation landscapeValue Proposition and Way of Working Forum AcquisitionMarketing and EventsBudget

The EIC exploitation role for ATHENA Value Chain Forum: Pilot for Interoperability ProfileATHENA concepts, tools and training in the EIC

Future Activities Interoperability AwardBuilding the Network Forums and Research


Value proposition - Development

EIC was positioned in a landscape of formal mandated and de facto standardisation as well as sector specification organisations

Focus “mobilise and actively involve the broadest possible number of stakeholders from all constituencies”

Positioning “world-class reference for interoperability work”

The value proposition was difficult to develop and challenging to communicate

To commission and reviewers

ATHENA members

Potential new member users and vendors

EIC has developed a clear and distinct position position in the standards community

scope


Framing the Problem

Sta

ndar

d

Custom Standard

Cus

tom

Mes

sag

e

Business Process

Interoperability Quadrant

Point-to-point

Industry Standard

1. Vertical standards organizations only move companies so far along this line

3. The proliferation of vertical standards has made even this movement difficult

Within and across industries2. Other companies must follow the same path for this to work

• The reference model aligns the critical factors of integration on two axis – messages (semantics) and business processes

• To simultaneously address cost and complexity, both messages and processes must be standardized

The format of the message is standardized by Industry standards organizations

Legacy installations of custom work processes and message structures

Aligned business processes, standardized messages and connectivity automation

Vertical standards


Standards and the EIC

Sta

ndar

d

Custom Standard

Cus

tom

Mes

sag

e

Business Process

Interoperability Quadrant

Point-to-point

Industry Standard

The EIC defines a standardized business process and also selects the best vertical industry standards by defining a profile

Standards Reference Model

Within and across industries

Vertical standards


Introducing the EIC: The Enterprise Interoperability Center

The EIC defines and applies integration methodology and tools leveraging existing standards where possible to define common public business processes for achieving interoperability of networked organizations across multiple industries.

The EIC Addresses the business and technical aspects of a common public process

Leverages existing technology, applications, research and standards

Defines architectures, methodologies, guidelines, best practices, semantics and interfaces

Validates an Interoperability Profile by building prototype implementations of real-world business scenarios defined by precise requirements

Promote a community for training, conformance testing, analysis and other services to facilitate broad adoption in the community


EIC Deliverables

Interoperability Profile A common public business process definition that is consensus-driven

A concise definition of required business semantics

Guidelines, conventions and best practices for using the Interoperability Profile

Reference Implementation Use cases and usage scenarios based on customer requirements

Demonstrate interoperability in a production implementation

Methodology, Test tools and supporting materials Tools that test profile implementations for conformance

Supporting documentation, results and white papers


How the EIC Works

So

lutio

n P

rovid

ers

Users

Business Forums

Use case: Scenarios that convey how

the various participants in a system should interact to achieve a specific business goal

Typically avoids technical jargon, preferring instead the language of the end user or domain expert

Business Process: Recipe for achieving a result Contains of inputs, method

and outputs Not intended to be the

“definitive” business process but must be a complete one that satisfies the scenarios described in the use case

Interoperability Profile: Describes a set of standards and

profiles for solution to business process to be created

Describes deficiencies in standards, including any messages specified - three categories: 1) problems within a specific standard; 2) interaction between standards; 3) missing standard

Close interlock between solution providers and users, focused on

Identifying business process requirements Producing Interoperability Profiles defining solutions to

business process requirements

Both vertical and cross-industry


Forum Life Cycle

Initial Detailed

Forum Operations

Use Case Business Process

IntOp Profile

Use Case Business Process

IntOp Profile

Member Commitment

IP Policy

Planning for Detailed Scoping

Value Prop

Business Process

St-o-t-Art

Best practices

Detailed work plan

Charter

Board ApprovalBoard Approval

scoping

Interest Group

InteroperabilityProfile


EIC Forum Acquisition Strategy

Co-operation with Usergroups and Standard Bodies Today: IAI – adding value to messaging standards

Construction Procurement

Facilities Management Tomorrow: OAGi: enhanced programme on convergence

Collaboration with Research Initiatives Today: ATHENA – exploitation, Collaboration vLAB

HSG – Value Chain Automotive – follow on activities

ITAIDE – exploitation, Community building Tomorrow: Testbed – initiative AIAG, NIST, OAGi

More research initiatives to join

Events Today: VCF 2006, i-ESA 2007 Tomorrow: VCF 2007 hosted workshops,

I-ESA 2008

Interoperability award


Analyst Consultations

Profiles: •“Reference Model” for Business Profiles•When addressing an interoperability profile, the EIC needs to focus on business requirements down to technology not vice versa for identifying “optimal” (not “best”) solutions. •Beware that “Standards” have been used as a marketing and commercial weapon and have frequently been manipulated so the press and analysts to a certain extent have “Standards Fatigue”.•Need to clearly articulate and reiterate that the EIC is about business integration.•Recommended using an eclipse like iterative model of freezing a base set of processes for contributors to build off of, then rejoin to review best set of changes to enhance the next level base.

Target Members•Need to differentiate what type of CIO we are addressing—those that are technology v. business oriented.•Value proposition for solution providers needed to be right sized for small, medium and large businesses stressing the strength and advantages of an ecosystem

Launch•Launch of the EIC has to be done in a “soft launch” fashion, be grass roots driven and based on a long list of customers who are focused initially in the areas of building and automotive.•Incubator projects and working groups can be developed for additional sectors before officially becoming Forums in the EIC

Long term Value.•The greatest value of the EIC will be at the intersection of where different forums meet.

IBM and SAP sponsored a range of Analyst consultation meetings Feedback to value proposition and approach was very valuable: 10. July 2006 Gartner 2. Aug 2006 AMR 16. Aug 2006 BURTON 20. Sept 2006 Ovum


Marketing

Web Site www.eic-community.org

Event Activities Co-hosting Value Chain Forum 06

(350 participants, 14 Workshops)Presentation on Forum MethodologyPresentation on Interoperability in Transport and LogisticsPresentation on Facility Management Interoperability IssuesPresentation on VCA results

Co-hosting I-ESA 07Introduction of Interoperability AwardInitiation of IA committee

Numerous Presentations at ConferencesETSIOAGieBIFAIAG etc


Scope and organisational form

EIC focuses on “value for money” for the members

Only achievable by low negative cash flow and high ressource contribution of members

The start-up phase focuses on proof and adoption of concept,

The operation and procedures were adapted accordingly The governance documents and the business plan were therefore

reshaped. It was to be expected, that the perceived value of the organisation would be developed over time by the increasing number of communities working in the EIC.

The members decided to concentrate the funds to support communities with specialised resources rather than building an administrative overhead which for the ramp up time, was not seen as appropriate


Organisation

Board of Directors

Secretariat:

Business ForumChair and Vice-Chair

Open for all Members

General AssemblyApproving annual accounts, budgets and work plans as proposed by Board

Association

Board

Approves charter/ Approves final deliverables

TechnologyCoordinationGroup

Marketing Group

AdministrationInterest GroupSelects Business Scenario

Creates Charter

Acquires members

Coordinates / supports


Financing up to date

Resources Person Months 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Total

ATHENA B1Total 3,0 24,0 5,4 0,0 0,0 32,4

Outside ATHENATotal 2,0 12,5 22,4 14,0 0,0 50,9

1000.00 €

ATHENA B1Total 60,0 408,0 108,0 0,0 0,0 576,0

Outside ATHENATotal 224,0 418,4 256,0 0,0 898,4


Budget

Budget 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Membership Fee Total 70 78 108

Cumulative Income 70 126 124

Costs Admin 6 7 10

GA 2 2 3

BoardMtg 2 2 3

Forum Supp 2 80 80

Award 5 5 5

Web Site 4 4 4

Events 1 10 10

Total 22 110 115

P&L 48 16 9


EIC: The balance between vendors and users

Large vendors and other founding members have taken the burden to get EIC off the ground

“this is not the risk but the intention” as more as large vendors understand the better the product for the user

Users have a significant part [] of the board reserved

It was always in the interest of the EIC to assure the attendance of a wide range of representative providers. Work groups are seen as an ideal place to bring together different categories such as industrial users, vendors and solution providers.

Each Working group will endeavour to attract a balanced attendance of different players with regards to industry, size of organisation and category


Outline

EIC todayEIC in the standardisation landscapeValue Proposition and Way of Working Forum AcquisitionMarketing and EventsBudget

The EIC exploitation role for ATHENA Value Chain Forum: Pilot for Interoperability ProfileATHENA concepts, tools and training in the EIC

Future Activities Interoperability AwardBuilding the Network Forums and Research


EIC Pilot - Background

In order to define the methodology and organization of EIC Business Forums, the initiative “SOA For Automotive”, started by University of St. Gallen (HSG) in October 2005, has been attributed the status of EIC Pilot in Q2/2006.

“SOA For Automotive” involves 6 Automotive companies, andaims at improving interoperability in OEM - supplier relationships by

Creating a common understanding of the cross-organizational engineering change management process;

establishing a clear semantic for Engineering change documents; leveraging Web Services and SOA concepts for implementation.

Although the approach which was chosen by University of St. Gallen has originally been developed outside the ATHENA project, it is very much in line with ATHENA and EIC ideas.

Targets of the EIC Pilot are to define the methodology of EIC Business Forums, and in particular to evaluate

ATHENA results for their use in EIC to gain insights into the the setup and organization of consortium projects

System


EIC Pilot - Profiling of industry standards

EIC Profile Engineering Change Management in the Automotive Industry

Relationships to other Standards / Profiles

VDA Recommendation 4965 (ECR/ECM)OAGIS 9.0WS-I Profiles

Use case(motivation, actors, scenarios)

Interaction scenarios in engineering change management (reflecting different cooperation models between OEM and supplier)

Process model “Public” view of engineering change management process as ARIS EPC (BPMN used as shadow documentation)

Role model Role model • organizational level: 2 roles (coordinator and participant)• functional level: 9 roles (Engineering Change manager, comment performer, approver, …)

Interoperability profile:- messages (information model)- web services (functional model)- platform

11 messages (OAGIS BODs) ECR Business Service (WSDL)WS-I Basic Profile; Security (Two-way SSL + WS-Security); in future: WS-I Reliable Secure Profile (WS-I RSP)

Profile conformance (Not yet defined)


Findings

The EIC Pilot has identified the following ATHENA results to be particularly suited for further use in EIC Business Forums:

The CBP modelling approach and the CBP tool suite (Maestro, Gabriel) will support the agreement on a public business process.

The model-driven approach and in particular the PIM4SOA (platform-independent model for service-oriented architecture) meta-model assists the systematic design of a SOA target architecture.

The service enactment framework (Johnson) and WSDL analyzer tool can be used in piloting and testing activities.

ATHENA assists in modelling business protocols and documents.

So far, ontology-based semantic annotation and reconciliation have been out of scope in the EIC pilot although an information model is considered an integral part of the business level specification. However, these concepts might be introduced into EIC Business Forums at a later stage.


Guidelines Technical Specifications Tools, Software

Enterprise Models Cross-org. Business

Processes Service-oriented

Architecture Model-driven

Architecture

ATHENA Interop. Framework

Reference Models MDA implementation SOA models

Requirements Mgmt. Tool

Use-case and test-bed platforms

Modelling & Execution platform

EIC Services Portal

Evaluation, Assessment

Implementation support

Training

Conformance Test

Business Forums

Interoperability Profiles

Test ScenariosImplementation

Guidelines

EIC Exploitation ATHENA

ATHENA

Training Curriculum

ATHENA Results for Forum Work

Pilot case VCAFirst selection of modulesLOIs with ATHENA partners6 months forum support

ATHENA Results for community

EIC service portalLOIs with ATHENA partnersEIC Training curriculum


Future Activities

Interoperability Award

Principle idea: The "interoperability award" can help share the core knowledge of the EIC and its

principles like open standards, flexibility and the formation of public business processes The philosophy of the award needs to be clear and understood:

Focus should be given to evaluating interoperability projects under business aspects Purpose should be to evoke the thought process about interoperability and create awareness about existing solutions and trends

Approach The IA should not be an EIC only activity, some “heavy weight” partners should get

involved for ressourcing and reputation purposes. The Interoperability Award can be an ideal starting point for a cooperation with OAGi based on the signed MoU. Further parties could be involved as well.

The details for the award should be defined by an Award Committee – including the setting of the principles and development of a roadmap.


Future Activities

Building the Network

Signed MOUs today: eBIF,

vLAB,

OAGi

Support OAGi convergence strategy with convergence around

EIC Business Profiles.

Introduce Business Forums to the Convergence Community


Future Activities: Research Collaboration

Many research activities are working in the area of interoperability

EIC can support these initiatives by offering a methodology for interoperability cross business

processes offering its platform and portal for the dissemination of results offering sustainability for existing project initiatives

Dynamic Interoperability testbed facilities are planned (Co-operation with NIST and KORBIT)

The EIC can provide industry input for the Interoperability Roadmap

We actively search the European Commission to endorse the future collaboration


Enterprise Interoperability Center (EIC)

enterprise interoperability center (eic)

Documents

existing standards

standardized business

communityeic enterprise

standardized messages

common public process

eic exploitation role

axis messages semantics

athena value chain forum