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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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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)
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
DBE Conceptual model
Courtesy of Francesco Nachira
Usage Scenarios
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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
Service Execution Environment
Role of MDA
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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
...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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
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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2004, Pierfranco Ferronato, www.soluta.net, Some rights Reserved
Questions?