OASIS Service-Oriented Architecture End-to-End Resource Planning (SOA-EERP) Technical Committee

The original Call For Participation for this TC may be found at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200806/msg00017.html

  1. Name of the TC:

    OASIS OASIS Service-Oriented Architecture End-to-End Resource Planning (SOA-EERP) Technical Committee

  2. Statement of Purpose:

    As Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has matured as a development, deployment, and governance paradigm, the performance of SOA deployments has received increasing attention.

    End-to-End Resource Planning (EERP) applies service discovery, composition, simulation, and optimization techniques in a novel way to improve business results. As the software industry has applied SOA to eBusiness deployments, self-optimizing systems as exemplified by EERP have become more feasible and necessary.

    Different deployments of services onto a business process have varying business value. For example, a shipper might offer faster but more expensive service. EERP models the business process and the range of potential services, then guide the selection and deployment of services based on the overall end-to-end business value.

    Modeling the business characteristics of a service is a prerequisite for estimating the business value of the process that uses those services; likewise, the reliability of the service provided needs to be understood. Finally, establishing agreements about the business service is essential to long-term value chain improvement.

    Challenges include:

    • The discovery, selection, assembly, and management of services supporting business processes
    • Monitoring and evolution over time of both the set of services selected and of the performance of the business process itself
    • Determining the varieties of optimization to be supported

    The focus of the TC will be on enablers for optimization and process improvement. Local and more global optimization of distributed business processes should prove more effective with consistent requirements and definitions.

    References on EERP are in section (2)(h).

  3. Scope:

    The SOA-EERP Technical Committee will focus on enablers for optimization. The enablers are, for example, definitions of the framework for representing the business process service rating terms, such how to represent cost, time, value, etc. We define "optimization" as maximizing business value by enabling improved real-life eBusiness process and resource planning at both design time and run time. In particular,

    • Resources are services performed by people, machines, and hardware/software applications, and represented by SOA services. Defining the qualities of such a business service will be done with metrics expressed as Business Quality of Service (BQoS). The nature of BQoS varies across industries and services.
    • Business processes are optimized in order to reduce cost, improve efficiency, and otherwise improve business results. Extensions to Business Process Management Notation and execution environments such as WS-BPEL will facilitate process improvement through automatic optimization and evolution.

    The TC intends to address the following to support optimization technologies. The parenthetical notes are proposed specification names:

    • A vocabulary and model for design-time and run-time optimization
    • Business characteristics of services demanded and supplied (BQoS)
    • Business reliability and reputation of suppliers of services (WS-Rating)
    • Business service-level agreements to manage and evaluate services (Business SLA)
    • Such additional work as determined necessary by the TC to enable evaluation and optimization of the business value of SOA-deployed Business Processes
    • A reference model for SOA optimization

    The TC will, insofar as possible, rely on existing work.

    Specific work with which the TC intends to coordinate is listed in Section (2)(a).

  4. List of Deliverables:
    1. Vocabulary, high level model, use cases, and requirements document (4 months from inception)
    2. Business Quality of Service specification (BQoS) (8 months from inception)
    3. Service and business process extensions to BPMN, WS-BPEL, and CSA-BPEL (12 months from inception)
    4. Business Reliability and Reputation specification (WS-Rating) (12 months from inception)
    5. Business Service Level Agreement specification (Business SLA) (15 months from inception)
    6. Reference model for SOA Optimization Implementations (21 months from inception)
  5. IPR Mode:

    The TC shall operate under RF on Limited Terms

  6. Anticipated Audience:

    Parties who would have interest in this work include enterprises that deploy and manage solutions which use SOA techniques and which want to develop effective business processes and improve the performance and agility of those solutions.

    Extensive applications of SOA-EERP techniques will likely be most cost-effective for long-running business processes, although SOA-EERP enabling specifications will also help in the definition and design of SOA end-to-end business processes.

    Earlier versions of EERP, specifications for which are anticipated to be contributed, are currently deployed in industry portals in China to facilitate service selection and business process improvement.

  7. Language:

    The TC will use English as the language for conducting its operations.

 

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