Aligning Service Level Agreements with Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture

Emerging business models such as digital ecosystems involving collaborative innovation, participatory decision-making and flexible organizational structures are set to significantly affect inter- and intra-enterprise structure and functionality. This has seen the appearance of increasingly complex Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) scenarios featuring various partnership levels, increased resilience and adaptation to tougher compliance regulations, more seamless integration with process layers, etc. This complexity has brought about the need to broaden the SOA paradigm, so as to include business, infrastructure and multi-layering, resulting in an evolved concept known as Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture (SOEA). This paper aims to describe the way new business and technology paradigms continue to affect the new SOEA approach and how the inherently holistic Enterprise Architecture (EA) frameworks and related practices can support the emerging complex dynamic, multi-layered and value-chained service-based scenario.

The goal of the workshop is to develop concepts and methods to assist the engineering and management of service oriented enterprise architectures and the software systems supporting them. Especially four themes of research have been pursued: 1. Alignment of the enterprise goals and strategies with the service-oriented enterprise architecture; 2. Design of the service-oriented enterprise architecture; 3. Mapping of service-oriented enterprise architecture to enterprise resources; 4. SoEA and Cloud-Computing; influence of cloud, social and big data.

Service orientation is a new paradigm, not only for software engineering but also for the broader topic of enterprise architecture. This chapter studies the relevance and impact of the service concept and service orientation to the discipline of enterprise architecture. It provides ideas on how to set up a service-oriented enterprise architecture. It is argued that a service-oriented approach to enterprise architecture provides better handles for architectural alignment and business and IT alignment, in particular.

SmartLife ecosystems are emerging as intelligent user-centered systems that will shape future trends in technology and communication. Biological metaphors of living adaptable ecosystems provide the logical foundation for self-optimizing and self-healing run-time environments for intelligent adaptable business services and related information systems with service-oriented enterprise architectures. The present research in progress work investigates mechanisms for adaptable enterprise architectures for the development of service-oriented ecosystems with integrated technologies like Semantic Technologies, Web Services, Cloud Computing and Big Data Management. With a large and diverse set of ecosystem services with different owners, our scenario of service-based SmartLife ecosystems can pose challenges in their development, and more importantly, for maintenance and software evolution. Our research explores the use of knowledge modeling using ontologies and flexible metamodels for adaptable enterprise architectures to support program comprehension for software engineers during maintenance and evolution tasks of service-based applications. Our previous reference enterprise architecture model ESARC--Enterprise Services Architecture Reference Cube--and the Open Group SOA Ontology was extended to support agile semantic analysis, program comprehension and software evolution for a SmartLife applications scenario. The Semantic Browser is a semantic search tool that was developed to provide knowledge-enhanced investigation capabilities for service-oriented applications and their architectures.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) introduced the web services as distributed computing components that can be independently deployed and invoked by other services or software to execute composite services that represent an end-to-end business process. An important problem in the SOA is the web service selection and composition problem which involves selecting the right web services mix to construct the best service composition that achieves the consumers Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements. In this chapter we propose different methods to solve the problem of the business processes execution engine web service selection and services composition construction in the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).  The chapter provides different mechanisms to improve the web services selection and composition using dynamic techniques. The main goal is to satisfy the services' requirements expressed as the SLA and to enhance the services selection and composition by increasing the availability and decreasing the response time of the service compositions.

Formalization of Enterprise Architecture (EA) concepts as a whole is an area which has continued to constitute a major obstacle in understanding the principles that guide its adaptations. Ubiquitous use of terms such as models, meta-models, meta-meta-models, frameworks in the description of EA taxonomies and the relationship between the various artefacts has not been exclusive or cohesive. Consequently variant interpretations of schemas, conflicting methodologies, disparate implementation have ensued. Incongruent simulation of alignment between dynamic business architectures, heterogeneous application systems and validation techniques has been prevalent. The divergent and widespread paradigm of EA domiciliation in practice makes it even more challenging to adopt a generic formalized constructs in which models can be interpreted and verified (Martin et al., 2004). The unavailability of a unified EA modelling language able to describe a wide range of Information Technology domains compounds these challenges leading to exponentiations of EA perspectives. This paper seeks to present a formalization of concepts towards addressing validation concerns of EA through the use of ontologies and queries based on constraints specified in the model’s motivation taxonomy. The paper is based on experimental research and grounded on EA taxonomies created using the ArchiMate modelling language and open source web ontology. It delves into the use of semantics triples, Resource Description Framework Schema and relational graphs to map EA taxonomy artefacts into classes and slots using end-to-end conventional formalization approach applicable within heterogeneous EA domains. The paper also expounds on a proposal that postulates implementation of the approach, enables formalized traceability of EA validation and contributes to effective validation of EA through refined taxonomy semantics, mappings and alignment of motivation.

Digitization of societies changes the way we live, work, learn, communicate, and collaborate. In the age of digital transformation IT environments with a large number of rather small structures like Internet of Things (IoT), Microservices, or mobility systems are emerging to support flexible and agile digitized products and services. Adaptable ecosystems with service-oriented enterprise architectures are the foundation for self-optimizing, resilient run-time environments and distributed information systems. The resulting business disruptions affect almost all new information processes and systems in the context of digitization. Our aim are more flexible and agile transformations of both business and information technology domains with more flexible enterprise information systems through adaptation and evolution of digital enterprise architectures. The present research paper investigates mechanisms for decision-controlled digitization architectures for Internet of Things and Microservices by evolving enterprise architecture reference models and state of the art elements for architectural engineering for micro-granular systems.

The digital transformation of our life changes the way we work, learn, communicate, and collaborate. Enterprises are presently transforming their strategy, culture, processes, and their information systems to become digital. The digital transformation deeply disrupts existing enterprises and economies. Digitization fosters the development of IT systems with many rather small and distributed structures, like Internet of Things, Microservices and mobile services. Since years a lot of new business opportunities appear using the potential of services computing, Internet of Things, mobile systems, big data with analytics, cloud computing, collaboration networks, and decision support. Biological metaphors of living and adaptable ecosystems provide the logical foundation for self-optimizing and resilient run-time environments for intelligent business services and adaptable distributed information systems with service-oriented enterprise architectures. This has a strong impact for architecting digital services and products following both a value-oriented and a service perspective. The change from a closed-world modeling world to a more flexible open-world composition and evolution of enterprise architectures defines the moving context for adaptable and high distributed systems, which are essential to enable the digital transformation. The present research paper investigates the evolution of Enterprise Architecture considering new defined value-oriented mappings between digital strategies, digital business models and an improved digital enterprise architecture.

This work presents a novel scheme for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). An SLA is a contract that guarantees quality of service (QoS) between service providers and consumers. An SLA can be split into several parts for an SOA system which is consisting of different services. A split SLA is used to guarantee quality of services for one of services in an SOA system. However, these contract rules do not regulate follow-up process in services. SLA violations may occur consequently. For instance, interactions between services are not encrypted because the encryption parameter isn't included in the split SLA contract. Confidential data would be transmitted through unsafe channels. There would be a security issue of SLA Management for follow-up processes in an SOA system. The novel scheme in this work addresses these problems. Using SLAs management proposed in this work can identify the services that consumer needs and split the contracts for follow-up services. SLAs are not only guaranteed between service providers and consumers but also assured in follow-up processes. The proposed method improves the security and completeness of SLA using in an SOA system.

Managing Service Level Agreement (SLA) for composite semantic web services is a very complex process, as it involves many complex tasks such as components discovery, provisioning, monitoring, recovery, and coordination. Indeed, managing all these tasks manually is a very cumbersome operation, nevertheless it is time consuming and prone to errors. To overcome such problems, automated SLA management for composite semantic web services is needed. This requires the SLA of the composite service to be described in a machine-understandable format such that it can be understood and processed by the automated SLA management tool. Currently, there is no SLA description language for composite semantic web services, but there exists an SLA description language for atomic web services, known as the Web Service Level Agreement (WSLA). Hence, in this paper, we aim to extend the WSLA language to describe composite semantic web services' SLAs, then we show how we can automatically generate the components' SLAs from the composite semantic web services' SLAs; adopting the CRECENT framework that we previously proposed for managing composite web services.

Several frameworks have been developed to assist the analysis of service management systems. However, most of these frameworks only capture limited aspects of a service-oriented enterprise. This paper first reviews several popular service management frameworks. An enterprise architecture approach that is commonly used in information systems planning has been adapted to integrate various service management frameworks and tools, as well as to support the planning and documentation of a service-oriented enterprise. The proposed service-oriented enterprise architecture (SOEA) includes the following aspects: service, process, people, information, and motivation. Each aspect can be viewed from a strategic, tactical, and operational level. The mapping of the conceptual constructs of existing service management frameworks to the proposed SOEA is discussed in detail.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) plays a crucial role in aligning business strategies with IT infrastructure, but traditional EA practices often struggle to keep pace with rapidly changing business environments. This paper explores the application of lean principles to EA, proposing a Lean Enterprise Architecture approach. By systematically applying the core lean principles of value, value stream, flow, pull, and perfection to EA practices, organizations can potentially achieve more agile, efficient, and value-driven architecture. The research synthesizes existing literature on lean thinking and EA, presenting current progress, best practices, and challenges in implementing Lean EA. Key findings highlight Lean EAs potential to reduce waste, improve stakeholder alignment, and enhance adaptability in architectural processes. However, challenges such as organizational resistance and the need for new skill sets are also identified. The paper concludes by outlining future research directions, including the development of Lean EA metrics and the integration of Lean EA with other modern approaches like agile and DevOps. This research contributes to the evolving field of EA by providing a comprehensive overview of how lean principles can transform EA practices, offering both theoretical insights and practical implications for EA professionals and organizations seeking to enhance their architectural capabilities in an increasingly dynamic business landscape.

A service level agreement (SLA) is a service contract that includes the evaluation criteria for agreed service quality standards. Since agreeable specifications on the evaluation criteria cannot be limited in practice, competitive SLA management products must be extensible in terms of their support for contract-specific SLA compliance evaluations. While the need of running and managing those software products as services increases, we have found that developing a good solution for configuring them as per contractual terms is a challenging task. This paper presents the Fresco framework, which facilitates configuring extensible SLA management systems using Web services. An XML-based specification of SLA management related data called SCOL will also be presented to show how the framework supports contract-specific SLA terms and contract-specific extensions of the deployed SLA management software. The paper furthermore shows how the Fresco system uses a template-based approach to communicate with other Web services applications with support for various input and output formats. Our experience with implementing the Fresco framework for a leading commercial SLA management software product demonstrates that the framework facilitates the creation of effective and efficient solutions for configuring extensible SLA management systems.

As the practice of Enterprise Architecture (EA) diversifies, the schematic management of its objects, semantics and relationship continues to be complex. Given that EA provides support for the IT environment by simulating alignment between dynamic business architectures, heterogeneous application systems and incongruent technologies, the need to ensure validation of conceptualized EA models has become also critical. As a relatively new discipline, its disparate and widespread methodologies makes it even more challenging to adopt a generic approach in which models can be verified sequel to the unavailability of unified EA modelling languages able to describe a wide range of Information Technology domains. This paper seeks to present an approach for addressing this challenge through the use of ontologies and queries based on constraints specified in the model's motivation taxonomy. The paper is experimental research-based and grounds its hypothesis on initial model created using the ArchiMate modelling language. By transforming its conceptual metamodel into a model instance, a process which can be achieved irrespective of the modeling language used in the design of the EA, it represents extracted triples as resource description framework schema (RDFS) by mapping the model artefacts directly into classes and slots using a more conventional web ontology language. The generated RDF is then queried using Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) adopting the Behavior Driven Development (BDD) concept. A case study of the Student Internship Program (SIP) is deployed to translate information from business needs to IT solutions encapsulating a view of abstraction of the EA. The paper also proposes an implementation of the approach using an open source platform that allows construction of domain models and knowledge-based applications with ontologies and is a contribution towards effective validation of EA through taxonomy decomposition, systematic generation of testable EA artifacts, creation of structural triples of model elements and alignment of motivational goals to business behavior specifications.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has undergone many changes since the IT has found its way into enterprises. At the moment the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is being hyped but has also gained some importance. Implementing SOA can have many implications for an enterprise, depending on how visionary the implemented architecture is. This paper provides the description of an enterprise architecture that is fully-fledged concerning service-orientation and points out the architectural challenges that have to be mastered with future research results.