introduction to the digital business ecosystem project fostering the research and technological...

Introduction to theDigital Business EcosystemProject

Fostering the Research and Technological Development, the DBE Project is an Integrated Project presented under the first call of the VI EU Framework

Programme The initial activities have started in November 2003

Pierfranco Ferronato,DBE Chief [email protected]

MDA Technical Forum, Tokyo20th, 21st October 2004

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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved

Note about the Author

Pierfranco Ferronato is the Chief Architect and founder of Soluta.net. He has over 15 years of experience in all aspects of distributed systems development and is internationally recognized as an expert in large-scale architectures and object-oriented/component development. Dr. Ferronato has provided technical and architectural leadership for several European projects using advanced Internet-related technologies, component-based development, webservices and wireless technologies in a number of domains, including telecoms, pharmaceutical, CRM, EAI and tourism. He is an active member of the OMG and a frequent speaker at conferences worldwide.Soluta.net is constituted by a team of IT professionals that have a worldwide experience in Component-Based Development and Enterprise Architectures. They have provided technical and architectural leadership for several European projects using advanced Internet-related technologies, component-based development, Web Services and wireless technologies in a number of domains, including telecom, pharmaceutical, CRM, EAI and tourism.

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Assumptions

Although this presentation is rather precise and formal, it is not technical and it is biased for business people and project managersEfforts have been made to avoid making reference to specific XML standards or tools

Given the complexity of the project I have avoided to provide a complete full-featured description of the architecture, the components and the conceptual frameworkThe main objective is to present this very challenging project and to define its relationship with MDA

Social Economical Context

Fostering the Research and Technological Development, the DBE Project is an Integrated Project presented under the first call of the VI EU Framework Programme The initial activities have started in

November 2003

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Information Communication Technology Migration

ICT MigrationFrom a limited environment to a global competition, + interrelation

All world economies are migrating toward service economies mediated by ICTs

From a well-defined business relationships to dynamic fuzzy relationship

un-known partner => on-demand access to services

Difficult to compete with large corporation with dominant positions

affordable applications are not available for SMEs

Sw is part of an environment, interoperability, sw more and more complex

Small companies have limited capability (cash, time, resources) to grow

A company's growth is self-reinforcing, ICTs increase its rate of growth

limited adoption of IT => minor increase of productivity

From a limited environment to a global competition

Different business modelsPublic companies have a mandate to grow from the shareholders

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) may not wish to grow and if private have no such mandate

This suggests the existence of a Digital Divide

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Role of SMEs

SMEs are 98% of EU companies by number and 50% of Gross Domestinc Product

Innovation & monopoliesLarge companies increase efficiency through product standardisation (patents)Small companies survive through specialisation

Thus:Large companies drive toward monopolies and market dominationSmall companies drive innovation

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Proving Europe’s advantage in innovative software application development through its SME industryCreating an open-source distributed environment to support

spontaneous evolution

adaptation

composition of software components which embed business rules

services.

Harnessing the complexity of software production throughevolutionary, self-organising and adaptive system

Developing a Digital Business Ecosystem

Project Objectives

The Digital Business Ecosystem Project(DBE)


November 2003

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Digital Ecosystem

J.F. Moore describes a Business Ecosystem as“An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organisations and individuals - the organisms of the business world. This economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. Over time, they co-evolve their capabilities and roles, and tend to align themselves with the future directions...”

(J.F Moore, The Death of Competition, 1996, pag.6-7)

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Lessons from the living world

Is built on composition and complex hierarchiesNo central control, no plans defined in advanceFault tolerant:

No central point of failure,

just viability concept

Diversity and autonomy (recursive)Just adaptation to the local conditionsSelection andevolution

Its needed an infrastructure supporting the life (composed of living organisms too), and a critical mass of individuals and biodiversity (bootstrap problem)

© ecosystems

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Research Objectives

Overarching objective

To enable evolutionary, self-organisation, learning and adaptive behaviour of the DBE services and system

Evolution

Local optimisation of DBE service chains for specific SMEs through genetic algorithms and fitness function

Self-organisation

High-level concept, not yet well defined in general and especially not for software!

We associate it with intelligence and memory

Learning

Long-time scale effect of intelligence

Adaptation

Short and long-time scale tracking of user needs

Global Optimisation

Best-match between companies based on global cost function, for regional policy studies

Courtesy of LSE

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Digital Darwinism

We are creating ‘digital Darwinism’:a digital environment that is able to evolve as the users need it to.

“It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin1809 - 1882

Project Consortium and Organization


November 2003

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The Project

Integrated Project funded under the Networked Business and Governments strategic objectiveDuration: 3 years [+ 1 optional]150 person-year of work, more than 40 full-time researchers, 110 in total20 partners, 9 Member States, 5 Regions involved directly15 M€ project value, 10.5 M€ fundingThe DBE is one of the largest EC research investments ever in F/OSS in ICT for e-business (100% of results delivered to the public domain)

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Project Time scale

Phase 1 (1-18 Months) Phase 2 (19-36 Months)

Nov 2003

DBE Sw available

DBE 1st release DBE operational

Nov 2006April 2005

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PartnersCensis (Italy)

FZI-Reseach Center for IT (Germany)

IBM (Belgium)

IESE (Spain)

Intel (Ireland)

Imperial College (Great Britain)

London School of Economics (Great Britan)

Salzburg Technical University (Austria)

Soluta.net (Italy)

Sun (Spain)

T6 (Italy)

Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)

University of Birmingham (Great Britain)

University of Crete (Greece)

University of Lecce (Italy)

University of Surrey (Great Britain)

Waterford Institute of Technology (Great Britain)

+

Several Regions from Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Finland,...

DBE Conceptual Model


November 2003

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DBE Conceptual model

Courtesy of Francesco Nachira

Usage Scenarios

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Supply Chain

Shear lines of sheet metal cutting machines.Worth millions of €

Made of million of pieces

Need thousand of suppliers (SMEs)

Given the business model of the supplied and the provider the Recommender will find the best match to compose the supply chainA missing piece from a single supplier means to stop the entire processIn such a critical situation, the DBE will Recommend a suitable Supplier

Any Supplier can enter the ecosystem by publishing its servicesAny Supplier can reuse pre-existing modelsDemocratic Business EnvironmentAs fast as the MarketIncrease Competition

DBE Structure

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Evolutionary Environment

Network of Habitats

DBE Environment

Service FactoryEnvironment

SME Ecosystem

Business Network

Adapted from Saltzburg University

P2P Networks

Service ExecutionEnvironment

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Components

Service Factory Env.Service Modelers/Editors

Development environment

MOF based pervasive repository of models

Service Composer

Service Exec. Env.Pervasive Service Registry

P2P network for service deployment

Basic ServicesAccounting

Payment Systems

Information carriers

Identity Management

Recommendation

Product Catalogue

Network of Habitats

Service FactoryEnvironment

SME Ecosystem

Busianess Network

Adapted from Saltzburg University

P2P Networks

Service ExecutionEnvironment

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CIM Languages

Ontology Definition MetamodelAllow reasonings on models

Business Modeling Languages (BML)CIM description of the business side of firms and the services offered

DBE project requires a business modelling language to represent the business organisation, its products and services, contractual and agreement basis and to model business service descriptions

The BML contains information like: service offered and requested, resources, processes, business model and motivation, contract and agreement, policies, location and events related to business.

Regulatory frameworkModel national legislations and associate it with business models

Imagine a Negotiation process that, given the related contract regulations, is able to investigate the legal feasibility of an agreement with two parties

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PIM Languages

Service Description Language (SDL)PSM description of a service

The SDL describes the technical specification of a DBE service.

The SDL is able to describe the DBE service in a double-faceted fashion. One facet refers to the Semantic Description of DBE Services and the other refers to the description of the DBE Service Interaction Specification.

SDL is a semantically rich abstraction of the WSDL

Binded with BML

Binder with Ontology

SDL

BMLOntology

Regulatory

JavaCode

DBE Usage Process

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Service Factory Environment

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Service Execution Environment

Role of MDA

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MDA Stack

(M2)

(M1)

CIM & PIM Models

CIM & PIM Metamodels(BML, SDL, Ontology, Regulatory)

(M0)

Information

“The” MOF Model

Ab

stra

ctio

n

(M3)higher

lower

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Need for a Model Driven Architecture

We cannot avoid creating a meta-modeling platform if we want to achieve interoperability

DBE Build time: DBE Structural components

Service Build time: reusing/importing foreign models

Service Run-time: service integrationMDA serves as Common Conceptual model for the DBE ConsortiumWe need standard approach to Model transformationWe need standard approach to Code GenerationWe need standard approach for Model lifecyle: design, encoding, storing, transformation, representationsEnforcing separation CIMs-PIMs-PSMs

Evolutionary Model

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Evolutionary model repository...

The DBE does not want to over impose a reference model for both business and computation

Previous EU projects failed here

No DBE Commission or committee“A camel is a horse designed by a Comitee”

Thousands of millions of users vs a 10 people commitee

“Let's the marked decide”Models become standard because of market need and pressure

“As fast as the market”Do not wait for commission standardization

It is ready when it is needed and applied

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...Evolutionary model repository

Scenario“Based on a profile information, the DBE recommendation process finds a more convenient taxi service that is promply replaced with no fuss”

A more convenient service BUT with a different SDLs will create inhertia in the adoptionEffective business models will be reused over and overModels will be enhanced and will “evolve” to address the market more closelyWe expect that services pertaining to the same domain, will naturaly converge to cluster of models

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It is not as easy

The critical mass is “critical”How many SME users are needed?

Which is the critical mass?

It takes a long time to convergeWill it converge?

Science partners will try to provide answersAI, Neural Network

Conclusions

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MDA, “the silver bullet” ?

MDA is bringing great advantages to the projectMDA is tackling the project complexityWe constantly refer to MDA, OGM standards and MOF models as a common framework and approach to interoperabilityWe reuse and provide value added to Open Source projects“we are not alone out there”

BUTThe standards are not stable yet, different communities are doing things their own way with XMI/MOF bases repositoriesModelling Tools and MOF repositories are in their early stages: lack of documentationModelling Tools and MOF repositories are barely interoperables

... more to come in the II session

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MDA Current limits

No versioning supportNo model dependencies supportLacks Symbol semanticsExcept for CORBA there is no distributed MOF interchange interfaceNo strict compliance with OMG standard out there

No validation process (W3C does provide validators)

MDA product standard compliance, it is hard to tell the level of MDA compliance in tools

Risk to MDA Vendor lock-in

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Questions?

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