Abstract: This paper studies the following problem: given a pair of business process models, determine which elements in one model are related to which elements in the other model. This problem arises in the context of merging different versions or variants of a business process model or when comparing business process models in order to display their similarities and differences. The paper investigates two approaches to this alignment problem: one based purely on lexical matching of pairs of elements and another based on error-correcting graph matching. Using a set of models taken from real-life scenarios, the paper empirically shows that graph matching techniques yield a significantly higher precision than pure lexical matching, while achieving comparable recall.

Abstract: Business activity monitoring enables continuous observation of key performance indicators (KPIs). However, if things go wrong, a deeper analysis of process performance becomes necessary. Business analysts want to learn about the factors that influence the performance of business processes and most often contribute to the violation of KPI target values, and how they relate to each other. We provide a framework for performance monitoring and analysis of WS-BPEL processes, which consolidates process events and Quality of Service measurements. The framework uses machine learning techniques in order to construct tree structures, which represent the dependencies of a KPI on process and QoS metrics. These dependency trees allow business analysts to analyze how the process KPIs depend on lower-level process metrics and QoS characterisitics of the IT infrastructure. Deeper knowledge about the structure of dependencies can be gained by drill-down analysis of single factors of influence.

Abstract: The design of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) management function for an enterprise is no easy task. Various frameworks exist as well as EA management tools, which promise to deliver guidance for performing EA management. Nevertheless, the approaches presented by them stay either on a level too abstract to provide realization support or are far too generic, neglecting enterprise-specific EA related concerns. In this article, we discuss the architecture framework of The Open Group (TOGAF) and detail on its promising but nevertheless highly generic architecture development method (ADM). This article shows how the generic development steps can be complemented by a pattern based approach to EA management providing guidance for addressing specific EA related concerns with step-by-step methodologies as well as with corresponding viewpointsand information models.

Abstract: A key challenge in devising solutions to a range of problems associated with business process management: process life cycle management, compliance management, enterprise process architectures etc. is the problem of identifying process semantics. The current industry standard business process modeling notation, BPMN, provides little by way of semantic description of the effects of a process (beyond what can be conveyed via the nomenclature of tasks and the decision conditions associated with gateways). In this paper, we describe the conceptual underpinnings, design, implementation and evaluation of the ProcessSEER tool that supports several strategies for obtaining semantic effect descriptions of BPMN process models, without imposing an overly onerous burden of using formal specification on the analyst. The tool requires analysts to describe the immediate effects of each task. These are then accumulated in an automated fashion to obtain cumulative effect annotations for each task in a process. The tool leverages domain ontologies wherever they are available. The tool permits the analyst to specify immediate effect annotations in a practitioner-accessible controlled natural language, which enables formal specification using a limited repertoire of natural language sentence formats. The tool also leverages semantic web services in a similar fashion.

Abstract: This paper reports a study in which business process modelling was regarded as a useful tool for requirements engineering. We have used business process models as a starting point to derive alternative sets of requirements for a process-oriented system. These alternative sets capture different decisions regarding the intended “level of automation” for the various activities in a business process. The approach is demonstrated in a case study which consists of the development of a real system to manage processes in a Human Resources (HR) Department of a large organization. We use a requirements specification that was previously obtained through what we characterize as a “conventional” requirements engineering technique and we compare it with the requirements specifications derived from the business process model. We discuss the impact of the use of business process models in the completeness, correctness, consistency and traceability of requirements in the case study.

Abstract: In a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on Web Service technology the services typically communicate with each other by passing data values directly from one service to another. In the case the services are orchestrated by workflows the services receive their input values from the workflow engine and return their calculated results back to the engine by value. In this paper we show several use cases where such value passing behavior has drawbacks. To address this challenge we introduce the concept of pointers in SOA. Pointers allow services to pass their data by reference which is a fundamental advantage for Web Service communication. Furthermore we show an extension of BPEL that introduces reference variables as new type of data containers in workflows. In addition, for the management of pointers we present the Reference Resolution System which can be used in very flexible setups either as central or distributed system.

Abstract: Although the service-oriented paradigm has beenwell established in the technical domain for quite sometime now, service governance is still considered a researchgap. To ensure adequate governance, there is anecessity to manage services as first-class assetsthroughout the lifecycle. Now that the concept of service-orientation is also increasingly applied on thebusiness level to structure an organisation’s capabilities,the problem has become an even bigger challenge.This paper presents a generic business andsoftware service lifecycle and aligns it with the commonmanagement layers in organisations. Using serviceanalysis as an example, it moreover illustrateshow activities in the service lifecycle may vary onlower levels of granularity depending on the focus onbusiness or software services.

Abstract: Poor data in information systems impede the quality of decision-making in many modern organizations. Manual business process activities and application services are never executed flawlessly which results in steadily deteriorating data accuracy, the further away from the source the data gets, the poorer its accuracy becomes. This paper proposes an architecture analysis method based on Bayesian Networks to assess data accuracy deterioration in a quantitative manner. The method is model-based and uses the ArchiMate language to model business processes and the way in which data objects are transformed by various operations. A case study at a Swedish utility demonstrates the approach.

Abstract: Enterprise Architecture deals with the structure of an enterprise, relationships and interactions of its units. It provides a holistic approach to reconcile IT and Business concerns in an enterprise. Virtual Enterprises are collaborative ad-hoc alliances of multiple enterprises for a specific business opportunity. This paper looks into both the paradigms and Enterprise Architecture viewpoint of Virtual Enterprise. Service Oriented Architecture as a style of Enterprise Architecture proves to be an enabler of Virtual Enterprises at Business and Technology Levels. The three major challenges with Virtual Enterprise are flexibility, adaptability, and agility. This paper discusses Virtual Enterprise Architecture as a solution to these challenges, surveys research into formal models of Virtual Enterprise Architecture and identifies current gaps in this research.

Abstract: This position paper examines the development of a dedicated service aggregator role in business networks. We predict that these intermediaries will soon emerge in service ecosystems and add value through the application of dedicated domain knowledge in the process of creating new, innovative services or service bundles based on the aggregation, composition, integration or orchestration of existing services procured from different service providers in the service ecosystem. We discuss general foundations of service aggregators and present Fourth-Party Logistics Providers as a real-world example of emerging business service aggregators. We also point out a demand for future research, e.g. into governance models, risk management tools, service portfolio management approaches and service bundling techniques, to be able to better understand core determinants of competitiveness and success of service aggregators.

Abstract: Modern enterprise application systems are parts of complex IT landscapes. The architecture of such a landscape may impose constraints upon the design of single applications, for example by the mandatory use of enterprise-wide reference architectures. It is of great importance for the sake of smooth operation and easy maintaining that single applications are com-pliant to the reference architectures. Checking this compliance is highly important for the architecture management to assure the quality of application systems. Unfortunately, current tool support is not flexible enough to easily check different aspects of architectural compliance.This paper proposes a rule-based approach based upon logic programming concepts towards a formalism for architectural compliance checking. In this approach, the architecture and design are represented as logical knowledge base that can be queried for architectural compliance. Furthermore, the paper presents a case study, in which the approach was prototypically implemented and applied in an industrial context.

Abstract: Accountability is emerging as an important theme within the regulatory privacy community. For global corporations, demonstrating accountability is no easy task due to the potentially large number of projects that have privacy sensitive aspects, privacy oversight being a mostly manual process and privacy staff typically being small. So how can a company present proof points that its projects comply with its privacy promises and obligations? In this paper we address this problem by introducing a technology-based solution for scalable, accountable privacy management across an organization. We present an Accountability Model Tool (AMT) that addresses the problem of capturing data about business processes in order to determine their privacy compliance. AMT utilizes an intelligent questionnaire with good completeness properties and is based on an augmented rule engine.

Abstract: Best-practice frameworks provide guidance for organizing work in business. They enable reuse of experience within a domain. However, best practice frameworks are general and usually cover broad domains. Their guidance thus is often offered at an abstract level rather than as details of actionable tasks and processes to accomplish work. This paper presents an approach to bridge the gap between the abstractions available in best practice framework and actions that have to be performed by people or systems in a repeatable manner. We identify knowledge from best practices frameworks, categorize it and represent it in the form of reusable, interpretable templates. Template interpretation guides the refinement process from general concepts of best practices frameworks into actionable concepts such as specific tasks to be performed by assigned roles. A prototype implemented to validate the approach is also described.

Abstract: Electronic government holds tremendous promise for improvements in internal governmental management as much as it does for the public service delivery. Efforts to e-procure goods and services estimated at about 12–25% of GDP from vendors since 1999 is expected to provide significant savings to the government. But the uptake among the vendor community is still less than satisfactory. A study was carried out to examine the organizational context in terms of the suppliers' involvement and perception towards the adoption of the public e-procurement system called “e-Perolehan”. Four main constructs were analyzed namely, organizational leadership, organizational perceived usefulness, organizational perceived ease of use and organizational facilitators involving 502 registered suppliers who are eligible to supply goods and services to the various ministries and federal government agencies. The overall results indicate that organizational perspectives play an important role in ensuring the success rate of adoption and use of e-Perolehan system. However, to achieve greater level of adoption and usage, the government must pursue a dual policy of coercion and persuasive. Incentives and prompt payment to the suppliers and datelines for adoption must not be extended any further as has been the case before.

Abstract: In Business Process Management, graph-based models are used to represent coordination protocols between collaborating partners as well as for service orchestration and composition. At runtime however, current process engines are commonly based on mainly block-structured languages, such as BPEL, that differ structurally and semantically from process graphs. Recent work has accomplished elaborate mappings between both representations. Although most mappings strongly depend on the segmentation of the graph-model into components, the necessary graph-decomposition itself is not described in these works. This paper presents a novel approach based on Token Analysis to automatically identify components. The technique also allows for optimizations by integrating further steps in the translation of process graphs to executable workflows.

Abstract: Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is based on a design principle for business software systems. The SOA movement has taken up momentum, especially because of widespread middleware vendor support, e.g. by IBM, HP, BEA, Microsoft, Sun, Software AG, TIBCO, Oracle, SAP and others. Still answers to questions of how the target architecture should look like and what the advantages over other architectures are remain open. We have implemented a scenario based on free software, which consists of a well-defined service-oriented target architecture. In this article, we compare the used service-oriented approach with other state-of-theart architectures to show that changeability and efficiency improve compared to alternative architectures.

Abstract: A pragmatic and straightforward approach to semantic service discovery is to match inputs and outputs of user requests with the input and output requirements of registered service descriptions. This approach can be extended by using pre-conditions, effects and semantic annotations (meta-data) in an attempt to increase discovery accuracy. While on one hand these additions help improve discovery accuracy, on the other hand complexity is added as service users need to add more information elements to their service requests. In this paper we present an approach that aims at facilitating the representation of service requests by service users, without loss of accuracy. We introduce a Goal-Based Service Framework (GSF) that uses the concept of goal as an abstraction to represent service requests. This paper presents the core concepts and relations of the Goal-Based Service Ontology (GSO), which is a fundamental component of the GSF, and discusses how the framework supports semantic service discovery and composition. GSO provides a set of primitives and relations between goals, tasks and services. These primitives allow a user to represent its goals, and a supporting platform to discover or compose services that fulfil them.

Abstract: Business process modeling is a commonlyused approach in the development of serviceorientedarchitectures. The previous research onthis topic demonstrated that process-oriented modelsmight be too rigid for dynamic adaptations ofthe business logic. Rule-based approaches are consideredan alternative, which offers more flexibilitythanks to the declarative nature of rules and theirunderlying reasoning algorithms. However, modelinga business process through rules is a tediousprocess for developers in terms of the overall businessprocess comprehension. In this paper, we proposea hybrid solution – a modeling language thatintegrates both rule- and process-oriented modelingperspectives. The language (Rule-based BPMN –rBPMN) is based on the integration of the BusinessProcess Modeling Notation with the REWERSERule Markup Language. In this paper, after introducingrBPMN, we report on the experience inmodeling of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA)from the perspective of message exchange patterns.

Abstract: For many enterprises the introduction of service orientation is still a daunting task and there is often no distinct idea of how to approach respective projects. Only recently, SOA research addresses this open and essential question and systematic methodologies for SOA introduction and evolution have been conceived. IBM's SOMA and sd&m's Quasar Enterprise are prominent examples. In practice, these methodologies have to rely on a variety of enterprise-specific information and integrate a number of different architectural instruments. This contribution introduces one typical constituent of evolution towards service orientation making extensive use of enterprise-specific information. The presented approach and prototypical implementation for the gap analysis of current and ideal application landscapes can also be regarded as a building block for more general architecture development methodologies like for example proposed by the TOGAF Architecture Development Method. The gap analysis measures the distance between two states of the application landscape by applying and aggregating a set of metrics specifically aimed at the context of architecture development. It results in a list of concrete actions which can be considered for landscape migration planning and hence can be a helpful instrument for enterprise architects.

Abstract: Automatic discovery of web services is a crucial task for e-Business communities. Locating and selecting “the best” web service from a vast number of similar services that matches the user's requirements and preferences is a cognitive challenge and requires the use of an intelligent decision making framework. This paper develops a flexible ontological architecture and framework for Semantic Web Service Selection that exploits Goldbaum's innovative “Follow the Leader” model originally designed as an analytic tool for studying social network behavior and evolution. The framework proposes two new ontologies integrated in a recommender system, which guides a user to select the best service that matches their requirements and preferences. We test and evaluate several behaviors of market leader scenarios using a simulation agent.

Abstract: The goal of the workshop is to clarify the relationship between business process management and service provisioning. This relatively recent area of interest requires the development of concepts and methods to assist the engineering and the management of Service-Oriented Enterprise Architectures and their support systems. Five peer-reviewed papers have been presented during the workshop. They allowed to characterize the strong relationship existing between Business Process Management and Service oriented Enterprise Architecture.

Abstract: Establishing loosely coupled collaborations between services provided by autonomous enterprises poses several requirements and challenges for the surrounding service ecosystem. In such context emphasis must be laid especially on the correctness of available metainformation and its usage. Towards this purpose, we characterize service ecosystems by a set of metamodels. The metamodels include domain ontology metamodels defining the vocabulary and knowledge elements needed for collaboration establishment and management, and metamodels relating such domain ontologies with infrastructure services and service production facilities. In this paper we describe the metamodels and discuss their application for interoperability knowledge management.

Abstract: Critical business processes can fail. Therefore, continuity processes are needed as backup solutions. At the same time business processes are required to comply with security, risk and compliance requirements. In the context discussed here, they should be modeled in a decentralized, local and declarative way, including methodological support by tools. By discussing a simplified loan granting process in the context of a Business Continuity Management System at Credit Suisse, we show how algebraic graph transformation can contribute a methodologically sound solution being compatible with all these requirements in a coherent way. As a consequence significant benefits of automation and quality can be realized. The presented contribution is theoretically sound and implementable by the people in the field.

Abstract: Mobile technologies have become a significant part of marketing operations. Since most of the traditional marketing campaigns are integrated onto mobile handhelds, mobile services are considered as powerful and innovative tools for delivering marketing messages. In this paper, we follow a three step review protocol and conduct a systematic literature review covering 230 academic journal papers in the mobile marketing area. We explore three specific characteristics for mobile services and discuss theories applied to mobile marketing research. We also use a meta-analysis approach to evaluate the relationship between mobile technology generation and mobile marketing evolution. Our work provides a roadmap of current trends and gaps in the literature in the field of mobile marketing.

Abstract: Enterprise Architecture (EA), with its numerous and pervasive models, can support decision making on enterprise-wide issues. To provide such support, EA models should be amenable to analysis of various quality attributes. The prerequisite to providing this is to define and characterize EA quality attributes explicitly. This paper proposes the idea of EA quality attributes and their characterization by using EA quality attribute general scenarios. Also a meta-model is presented for their purpose of definition. Finally, as a sample of EA quality attributes, EA maintainability has been defined and characterized.

Abstract: This report details the attempt to form a complete workflow model for an ICT company in order to achieve a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) maturity rating of three. During this project, business processes across the company’s core and auxiliary sectors were documented and extended using modern enterprise modeling tools and a The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF) methodology. Different challenges were encountered with regard to process customization and tool support for enterprise modeling. In particular, there were problems with the reuse of process models, the integration of different project management methodologies and the integration of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) development process framework that had to be solved. We report on these challenges and point out research directions that could help to improve the situation in the future.

Abstract: Business process compliance management is a field of study involving the co-ordination of business process management and compliance systems. A compliance system is an organisation wide tool that links legislative and business rules to organization policies and processes. The objective of such a system is to promote a self sustaining level of operations that minimizes the losses caused to the business through breaches of laws or internal misappropriations. We view a compliance system in a similar fashion to that of an accounting system where each process is treated as a transaction. Each process may be monitored and valuations of costing and benefits associated to each task. Both high order policy creation as well as low order transactional histories of single processes must be considered to obtain a complete picture of current operations. In this paper we discuss benefits and shortcomings in some of the currently implemented compliance schemes and present a method for measuring the degree of compliance that each business process may achieve.

Abstract: Business processes are captured by models that serve as a basis for communication and training purposes, but this modeling is still a time consuming manual job. Semantic annotation of process models in combination with AI planning approaches can contribute to solve this drawback enabling an automatic creation of process models. But the semantic annotated process fragments necessary for starting the planning are often missing at all or not up-to-date anymore. Therefore, this work describes an approach for the semantic annotation and semantic-based planning of process models and introduces Cystid, an integration of Process Mining algorithms and semantic-based planning.

Abstract: Server Virtualization is driven by the goal of reducing the total number of physical servers in an organisation by consolidating multiple applications on shared servers. Expected benefits include more efficient server utilisation, and a decrease in green house gas emissions. However, Service Oriented Architectures combined with Server Virtualization may significantly increase risks such as saturation and Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations.