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Does service composition suffice to define business contracts for IT services in Networked organizations

Does service composition suffice to define business contracts for IT services in Networked organizations. Authors: Antonella longo ; Mario A. Bochicchio ; Barbara Livieri Presenting author : Barbara Livieri ( Barbara.livieri@unisalento.it ). Agenda. Context Objectives Our experience

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Does service composition suffice to define business contracts for IT services in Networked organizations

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  1. Does service composition suffice to define business contracts for IT services in Networked organizations Authors: Antonellalongo; Mario A. Bochicchio; Barbara Livieri Presenting author: Barbara Livieri (Barbara.livieri@unisalento.it)

  2. Agenda • Context • Objectives • Our experience • Scenario • Issues • Related works • Service composition • Contractual Issues related to the feasibility of service composition • Contractual Issues related to service composition management • Conclusions and future works

  3. Context • Service are becoming a pervasive element in the current economic scenario • Companies all over the world are interconnected with each other by service networks • The delivery of IT services (especially SaaS) to final customers requires the description of the service in end-to-end perspective, • IT manager should be able to map and monitor the whole IT service chain from the data center to the final user • end-to-end measurement of services Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  4. Context Trade-off: cost or quality? • legal aspects; • terms: • obligations; • SLA • QoS • all relevant functional and non-functional properties of the service New services for final users IT Department evaluation of inter-organizational aspects contract is subjected to constraints coming from the underpinning contracts static documents, signed by humans and enforced by law electronic documents orchestrating the interplay of human and automatic agents belonging to networked organizations

  5. Objectives Obj: discuss some relevant open issues not covered by current Contract Management approaches and tools. • feasibility of service composition • how service levels limit and shape technical, legal and organizational aspects related to the contract of the composed service. Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  6. Our Experience - Scenario 7 year contracts SLAs for availability and performance • 300 applications developed in 30 years • wide variety of architectures, technologies and domains Temporary Group of Companies IT hardware and software managers IT service managers • more and more involved in the definition of business performance related to online business services; • business services are conceived and designed as a composition of lower level services provided through different technological platforms Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  7. OUR Experience - Issues Common issues Issues related to composed services “How” to define and evaluate the target service levels related to component services, in order to attain a given Service Level (SL) for the business service; • Different languages and goals of IT operators and business ones and they don’t interact with each other • Accountability: which are the responsibilities, the penalties and the obligations for each operator? Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  8. Related works Currently available CM and SLM methodologies are not sufficient as tools for effectively supporting large organizations in defining and managing contracts for online IT services and for their composition. • Works on CM and SLM usually take into account only automated agents in SOAs • nobody has still investigated how to model service chains taking into account stakeholders perspectives • In research literature the composition of services and the composition of contracts is largely investigated, but we haven’t found references about the issues of composing service level agreements, as defined in IT delivery contracts. We have also experienced that these issues are critical in enforcing service delivery contracts. Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  9. Service composition Feasibility analysis of service level composition Service level composition management The contractual issues that we are going to discuss regard both • the feasibility analysis of service level composition • the aspects of service level composition management in service contract enactment We can distinguish two sets of issues • some are blocking for service level composition • others must be checked but are not blocking since they may produce only empty sets Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  10. Contractual Issues related to the feasibility of service composition Feasibility analysis of service level composition Service level composition management

  11. Service definition And Accountability In order to compose services and to evaluate resulting SLs with related constraints, it is necessary to model them at the same level of abstraction Service Catalog Accountability is necessary in order to identify who manages the service and related service levels. Accountability imposes that all services deployed (regardless whether by human, machine or software) have the obligation to accept responsibility or to account for their actions. Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  12. Contractual Issues related to the feasibility of service composition Feasibility analysis of service level composition Service level composition management

  13. Service composition topology According to the topology services are composed and service level specifications are calculated differently Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  14. Contractual Issues related to the feasibility of service composition Feasibility analysis of service level composition Service level composition management

  15. Service visibility inside contracts SL metrics and measurement units Values of SLAs are based on metrics; In service composition, resulting service levels depend on composing service levels. The necessary conditions for comparing them are that the metric is the same and the measurement units are compatible (e.g. measures must be related to time, or all measures must be percentages). The decision is essential for contract owners in order to estimate the associated business risks of the composed service Gray box: internal details partially exposed Black box: no internal details White box: internal details fully exposed Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  16. Contractual Issues related to the feasibility of service composition Feasibility analysis of service level composition Service level composition management

  17. Service hours and calendar Example • In the composition of services the time window (and the service calendar) in which the composed service is guaranteed depends on the composing services. It defines the time and calendar the composed service level is guaranteed. • It depends on the topology and the homogeneity of services • If the composed service has an empty guaranteed window, the Service cannot be guaranteed • If C = (A in parallel with B) and (A and B are homogeneous): • If C = (A in parallel with B) and (A and B are heterogeneous): Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  18. Contractual Issues related to the feasibility of service composition Feasibility analysis of service level composition Service level composition management

  19. Contractual duration and measurement period Contractual duration Measurement period Each component service within the SLA owns a specific measurement period. The measurement period of the composed service is constrained by the corresponding component services. • Services are guaranteed in the contractual duration. It means that the contractual duration of the composed service is constrained by the durations of the component services Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  20. Measurement period • If the component services starts simultaneously, it is generally the least common multiple (l.c.m.) of each component’s measurement period • Otherwise initially the two measurements periods will be out of phase and need to be aligned Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  21. Contractual Issues related to service composition Management Feasibility analysis of service level composition Service level composition management

  22. Monitoring Plans • It is necessary to develop and implement an appropriate monitoring plan, conducting representative sampling, and to report the results. • map the relationships between composing and composed services. Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  23. Monitoring Plans • The monitoring plan must identify and provide information about each monitoring point. • Each monitoring point must be located on the topology and labeled. • The same points will identify monitoring points both for composing and composed services. Check point 1 Check point 2 Check point 3

  24. Contractual terms and conditions Since contracts are made up of subject, parties, terms and conditions, at least, it is necessary that even the composition of terms and conditions must be related. Context definition Domain definition As also drawn in the perspectives of service contracts must be domain specific in order to better fit specific situations of a domain in real world practice. Such service contracts features are usually shared as reusable professional knowledge within a specific domain. • according to different contexts, contract lifecycle can match different patterns and contract contents can vary (e.g., SaaS in Next Generation Networks, Cloud service contracts) Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  25. Conclusions and future works

  26. Conclusions and future works • Contribution: the paper explores how service composition, with specific focus on service levels, shapes technical, legal and organizational aspects related to the contract of the composed service and discusses the feasibility of the composition according to different aspects. • Conclusion: it is necessary to integrate aspects related to service levels design and management in contract management process in order to consider constraints and features related to service composition, which are fundamental in contract enactment and further enforcement. In this way issues like sustainability and feasibility of service contracts could be partly routed. An approach and tools encapsulating these topics could be very effective for several stakeholders involved in SLM and CM processes and could be useful for what if analysis, assessment for guaranteeing certain service level and sensitivity analysis. • Further works: development of: • a methodology for the integration of technical, commercial, strategic and contractual elements in SLA definition • a platform supporting the composition of service levels, with attention to the constraints they will create at contractual level. Barbara Livieri– The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2013) – Luxembourg, October 28th – 31st

  27. Thank you!

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