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Aesop project: a new architectural approach to change management. What is Aesop?. a research and development action partially financed by the European Commission within IST 2001 work programme (KAII.2.2, Smart organisations, n. 33314). The Aesop’s targets.
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Aesop project: a new architectural approach to change management
What is Aesop? • a research and development action partially financed by the European Commission within IST 2001 work programme (KAII.2.2, Smart organisations, n. 33314)
The Aesop’s targets • more than 1,500 Chambers of Commerce in 36 European countries • representing about 15,000,000 enterprises • Many are small private, other big public • a common orientation in providing information and/or information-based services (advice, promotion, training, internationalisation, arbitration and conciliation).
Problems to solve • Give a personalised assistance to SMEs on-line (a 3rd generation portal) • An always changing environment, where political and economical rules change everyday; • So that on-the-fly re-configurability is crucial…
The usual approach to Chamber’s problems: • Users are often considered absolute beginners, or ignorant to catechize • Consultants and technicians seem to ignore calendars, we are not in 1995, but in 2002; • Let see a daily scene in the Chamber’s world…
God, save me from testing it… Tell me it’s not true… …and finally you need a workgroup application! … Just another one!
What’s industry pretending? • Full solutions are available • Document management, workgroup are there, customer relationships as well! • Knowledge management tools can be used • Workflow is so easy to implement! • Every solution pretends to do everithing!
The solution suppliers’ trap • IT industry still needs to understand time to time changing environments need on-the-fly reconfigurations due to: • Politics constraints • Market challenges • IT industry tends to build traps, but users do not want to be trapped by It-does-everithing solutions…
How do we overcome the trap… • Ethnography to understand better… • Deconstructuring already existing solutions; • Getting elements and functions as components • Make it configurable from the user • Adopt open source frameworks
Regional associations of chambers in Italy • Activity: distributing and selling economic information • Goal: give more personalised information to clients (Smes, consultants, agencies) • Elements: private space, catalogue of offers, decision support, document management.
Regional Chamber in Lyon • Activity: technology exchange and partnership promotion • Goal: provide an “on-line-closed” space to match-making activities • Elements: database of clients, private space, decision support
Chamber of commerce in Stuttgart • Activity: manage apprenticeship education • Goal: create a safe environment to distribute and collect examinations papers; • Elements: document management, private spaces, database of clients.
private space The common elements IT DE document management Offers’ catalogue private space S4 Clients’ database • decision support FR
S4 • Secure Shared Server Space • Letting users acquire, configure and share private spaces
The technical solution • Development based on Open Source frameworks • Jetspeed and Tomcat from Apache. • Elements developed as portlets, using Java. • Easily configurable from the user.
What does this achieve ? • An infrastructural service rather than an application level function. • The ability to separate workflow and “business logic” from secure space capabilities. • Why? • Because all CCIs are different. • They want to configure and control their own environments.
Developed up to now • User authentication module with Smart cards, to build “private spaces” • Hierarchical document management portlet inside Jetspeed
Next to come portlets Decision support, CRM and “catalog” Building blocks for the 3rd generation portals.
offer access to distributed resources…in a form where they can be appropriated, configured and exploited in ways that are defined by the users, through their use.
Thanks More: www.aesop-ist.com