With the widespread use of the Internet and its associated technologies, enterprises have to evolve in the way they are conducting business. 'e-business applications' refer to a new class of distributed applications that involves the Internet as a communication platform. Each e-business application supports the full automation of business processes that can span across multiple enterprises. For a given application domain that involves e-business application development, a number of design decisions that best fullfil stakeholders requirements have to be made. One important issue is the reuse of functionality which exists within legacy systems that can belong to one or more enterprises within the same domain. Most existing design approaches are inadequate in supporting the exploration of all design combinations. Moreover, there is little work on how to identify the best design decisions systematically for a given application domain. In this thesis we present a pattern-based approach that addresses the architectural design of e-business applications. We identify a number of architectural patterns whose instantiation on a given design problem correspond to different architectural design alternatives. We also identify models that enable the estimation of quality attributes for such alternatives. Then we investigate and utilise methods to select the best pattern for a given design problem. We also describe the process of generating the alternative architectures, estimating their qualities, and then ranking them with respect to any quality attribute or a combination of quality attributes. We validate this approach on a real life case study in the area of capital markets. The case study concerns realistic e-business applications that rely on existing legacy applications. The validation exercise has produced predictions which have been compared with actual design decisions that have been made. The thesis also proposes a framework for the systematic identification of architectural patterns. An additional set of architectural patterns and their impact on the case study are discussed. The main contribution of this thesis is in the identification of patterns and quality attributes models for the architectural design of e-business applications that aid in the systematic selection of the most appropriate architectural pattern for a given problem context.

由於科技快速進步，企業經營也隨著科技的進步而產生重大變化，不但需求變化快速，企業還要即時快速反應外在環境，於是企業對於資訊系統整合的議題越來越重視，希望將功能導向的系統轉變為流程導向的系統，將資訊有效的整合及標準化，讓企業能快速地與外在環境連結，進而提升整體營運績效。 整合的方法非常的多，大致上可分為四類。目前對於哪一種整合方法是最有效率、效益也無一定論。最主要的原因是不同的整合個案會有不同的整合需求，若只從理論方面來探討資訊系統整合所帶來的效用並無法具體地呈現其價值。 有鑑於此，本研究之目的是希望透過個案單位的作業模型，分析、建構出整合的資料模型。因此，本研究以階段性的方法設計資料整合模型及其運作方法。在第一、二階段當中，先針對個案單位的流程進行系統資料流程塑模及業務流程塑模，再從業務面及系統面找出資訊中斷的地方及因素，並將問題具體地描述出來。在第三階段中，本研究挑選了最適合此個案單位的整合方法，也就是使用資料層級（Data-Level）整合的方法，設計整合的資料模型將資訊流完整的串接起來以支援企業的決策需求。最後一階段則要利用ETL說明整合的系統運作模式，並說明此個案單位使用ETL時，可能會遇到的問題及初步的解決方法。 / Owing to rapid advances in technology, enterprises have a major change of the progress of science and technology. The enterprises not only change rapidly in demand, but also have to response to the external environment rapidly. Hence, enterprise information system integration issues get more attentions. Enterprises hope to improve their systems from function-oriented to process-oriented because the effective integration of information and standardization allows enterprises to quickly link with the external environment and to enhance the overall operating performance. However, there are many kinds of integrated approaches. At present, there is no substantive conclusion in approaches to integrate efficiently all systems in business. The main reason is that the integration of different cases has different integration requirements. Therefore, it cannot concretely show the value of system integration through the discussion of the theoretical aspects. In this thesis, this study aims to enhance the operation of a case to model, analyze, and construct an integrated data model. This research has 4 phases to construct integrated data model. In phase 1 and 2, this study builds the case data flow modeling and business process modeling and discovers information gap. In phase 3, the study selects the most suitable method for this case, that is, to use the data level integrated approach to design integrated data model. Finally, using ETL illustrates system operation mode and describes the case which may encounter problems and initial solutions follow in phase 4.

Complex distributed systems such as distributed information flows systems which continuously acquire manipulate and disseminate information across an enterprise's distributed sites and machines, and distributed server applications co-deployed in one or multiple shared data centers, with each of them having different performance/availability requirements that vary over time and competing with each other for the shared resources, have been playing a more serious role in industry and society now. Consequently, it becomes more important for enterprise scale IT infrastructure to provide timely and sustained/reliable delivery and processing of service requests. This hasn't become easier, despite more than 30 years of progress in distributed computer connectivity, availability and reliability, if not more difficult~cite{ReliableDistributedSys}, because of many reasons. Some of them are, the increasing complexity of enterprise scale computing infrastructure; the distributed nature of these systems which make them prone to failures, e.g., because of inevitable Heisenbugs in these complex distributed systems; the need to consider diverse and complex business objectives and policies including risk preference and attitudes in enterprise computing; the issues of performance and availability conflicts, varying importance of sub-systems in an enterprise's distributed infrastructure which compete for resource in currently typical shared environment; and the best effort nature of resources such as network resources, which implies resource availability itself an issue, etc. This thesis proposes a novel business policy-driven risk-based automated availability management which uses an automated decision engine to make various availability decisions and meet business policies while optimizing overall system utility, uses utility theory to capture users' risk attitudes, and address the potentially conflicting business goals and resource demands in enterprise scale distributed systems. For the critical and complex enterprise applications, since a key contributor to application utility is the time taken to recover from failures, we develop a novel proactive fault tolerance approach, which uses online methods for failure prediction to dynamically determine the acceptable amounts of additional processing and communication resources to be used (i.e., costs) to attain certain levels of utility and acceptable delays in failure recovery. Since resource availability itself is often not guaranteed in typical shared enterprise IT environments, this thesis provides IQ-Paths with probabilistic service guarantee, to address the dynamic network behavior in realistic enterprise computing environment. The risk-based formulation is used as an effective way to link the operational guarantees expressed by utility and enforced by the PGOS algorithm with the higher level business objectives sought by end users. Together, this thesis proposes novel availability management framework and methods for large-scale enterprise applications and systems, with the goal to provide different levels of performance/availability guarantees for multiple applications and sub-systems in a complex shared distributed computing infrastructure. More specifically, this thesis addresses the following problems. For data center environments, (1) how to provide availability management for applications and systems that vary in both resource requirements and in their importance to the enterprise, based both on operational level quantities and on business level objectives; (2) how to deal with managerial policies such as risk attitude; and (3) how to deal with the tradeoff between performance and availability, given limited resources in a typical data center. Since realistic business settings extend beyond single data centers, a second set of problems addressed in this thesis concerns predictable and reliable operation in wide area settings. For such systems, we explore (4) how to provide high availability in widely distributed operational systems with low cost fault tolerance mechanisms, and (5) how to provide probabilistic service guarantees given best effort network resources.

Submitted by Marcia Silva (marcia@latec.uff.br) on 2016-02-03T20:52:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERT MANASSES VICENTE.pdf: 2610789 bytes, checksum: 11b7e25414d7db496b0844456246caf4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-03T20:52:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERT MANASSES VICENTE.pdf: 2610789 bytes, checksum: 11b7e25414d7db496b0844456246caf4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-07 / Existem duas abordagens para integração de sistemas de informação: ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) e EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), sendo a mais conhecida a primeira delas. A integração fornecida pelo ERP não é por si só suficiente visto que falhou em atender a todas as áreas funcionais, deixando uma lacuna preenchida por softwares especialistas ou sistemas legados, principalmente em verticais de mercado não atendidas pelo ERP. É através da integração dos vários tipos de aplicações empresariais – EAI – que se atinge a integração ou inter-relacionamento dos processos de negócios e/ou estruturas de negócios. Portanto, ela é tanto estratégica quanto operacional, pois afeta os resultados das organizações, conferindo-lhes competitividade e sustentabilidade nos negócios. Entretanto, as dificuldades do EAI começam na escolha / seleção das tecnologias existentes ainda no processo de aquisição, tornando a tomada de decisão na aquisição de tecnologias ou soluções de EAI uma tarefa complexa e difícil devido aos critérios não apenas quantitativos, mas também qualitativos. O objetivo desta pesquisa é definir critérios para seleção de tecnologias de EAI. O método de pesquisa consiste na revisão da literatura para mapear os critérios usados na seleção de softwares, principalmente EAI e ERP, e na análise do conteúdo da norma ISO/IEC 25010:2011 sobre os critérios de qualidade de software e do Guia de Aquisições do Modelo de Referência para Melhoria de Processo do Software Brasileiro (MPS-BR) baseado na Norma Internacional ISO/IEC 12207:2008 que descreve o processo de aquisição de software e serviços correlatos. Este estudo apresentou como contribuição, além da quantidade expressiva de critérios identificados na literatura possíveis de serem usados no processo de aquisição de softwares, um conjunto de critérios provenientes da literatura científica e técnica, categorizados em três níveis, que possibilita aos profissionais de EAI poderem atuar de modo proativo desde a escolha da solução de EAI. / There are two approaches for the information systems integration: ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) which is well-known, and EAI (Enterprise Application Integration). The ERP integration is not totally satisfactory as it has failed in supplying all functional areas, providing space to be filled by specialized softwares or legacy systems, mainly in market verticals where ERP could not meet. By the integration with the several types of business applications – EAI – it is possible to reach an integration or interrelationship of the business processes and/or structures; therefore, it is as strategic as operational since it affects the organizational results, providing the organizations business competitiveness and sustainability. However, the EAI’s difficulties lie in choosing/selecting the existing technologies in the acquisition process, turning the decision-making of technologies or EAI solutions acquisition a hard and complex task due to the criteria not only quantitative but also qualitative. The purpose of this research is to define criteria for EAI technologies selection. The method of research consists of literature revision to map the criteria used in softwares selection, mainly the EAI and ERP, and analysis of ISO/IEC 25010:2011 standard content on the software quality criteria and Guia de Aquisições do Modelo de Referência para Melhoria de Processo do Software Brasileiro (MPS-BR) based on ISO/IEC 12207:2008 International Standard, which describes the acquisition process of software and associated services. This study has presented as contribution, aside from the significant amount of the identified criteria in the literature and their possibility of being used in software acquisition process, a set of criteria derived from scientific and technical literature, categorized in three levels, enabling EAI’s professionals to act proactively from the choice of EAI solution.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural paradigm that allows building of infrastructures for diverse application interaction and integration via services across different platforms, domains of technology and locations. SOA differs from traditional architectures, as it focuses on integrating capabilities that are distributed and implemented using a mixture of technologies. SOA provides a set of methodologies and strategies to accomplish interoperability and integration among different technology stacks.   Vattenfall is the fifth the largest energy supplier within Europe. Having operational systems in different countries brings the challenge of integrating all these distributed systems and this integration is a vital requirement for Vattenfall. The company is currently using Microsoft proprietary products to achieve integration across different technological platform, but requires a better integration infrastructure which is easily extensible and cost effective.   This thesis investigates the impact of implementing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) using open source or proprietary software products within Vattenfall, from technological and financial perspectives. For this purpose, different technical and non-technical function blocks are identified which are essential for the implementation of SOA. These function blocks are mapped with SOA solutions provided by Red Hat’s JBoss Open Source SOA Platform and Microsoft’s SOA Platform. After mapping, a vendor specific technical and non-technical comparative analysis is carried out based on the function blocks, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor.   Finally, an evaluation scheme is purposed based on the technical comparative analysis of vendors, SOA solution cost and SOA competence required. The results from this evaluation scheme are used to recommend the best solution vendor for Vattenfall Nordic. Moreover, this evaluation scheme can also be used to facilitate management in arriving at an appropriate decision about implementation of SOA, while remaining within their requirements and constraints.

Today, with various technology and business standards, organizations face rapid changes in both internal and external environments. To be able to rapidly respond to such changing environments, integration of software systems has entered among the top priorities of many organizations. However, despite extended use of software integration, methods for estimating the business value of implementing such integration are still missing. Besides presenting a conceptual model to define the benefits of systems integration and related causal relationships, this study proposes a method for measuring such benefits in monetary terms. In particular, we  demonstrate how a mathematical programming technique called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) can be used to evaluate the business value of software integration. Our method is illustrated using data from 12 organizations. The results indicate significant productivity gains by integrating software systems, which represent the value of software integration in organizations.

Bei der Umsetzung moderner Managementkonzepte wie bspw. Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management und Partner Relationship Management werden Anwendungssysteme wertschöpfungskettenübergreifend eingesetzt. Das bedeutet, dass sowohl interne als auch externe Benutzer auf verschiedene Anwendungssysteme eines Unternehmens zugreifen. Die daraus resultierenden Anforderungen werden als Paradigma des homogenen Enterprise Access Managements (hEAM) beschrieben. Zur Umsetzung dieser Anforderungen wird ein Referenzmodell zur anwendungssystemübergreifend konsistenten Zugriffssteuerung (MAKS) entwickelt. Eine entsprechende Realisierungsmöglichkeit in Form eines zentralen Rollen- und Rechtemanagementsystems (ZR2MS) ergibt sich aus der Referenzarchitektur zur anwendungssystemübergreifend konsistenten Zugriffssteuerung (A2KS).

Bei der Umsetzung moderner Managementkonzepte wie bspw. Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management und Partner Relationship Management werden Anwendungssysteme wertschöpfungskettenübergreifend eingesetzt. Das bedeutet, dass sowohl interne als auch externe Benutzer auf verschiedene Anwendungssysteme eines Unternehmens zugreifen. Die daraus resultierenden Anforderungen werden als Paradigma des homogenen Enterprise Access Managements (hEAM) beschrieben. Zur Umsetzung dieser Anforderungen wird ein Referenzmodell zur anwendungssystemübergreifend konsistenten Zugriffssteuerung (MAKS) entwickelt. Eine entsprechende Realisierungsmöglichkeit in Form eines zentralen Rollen- und Rechtemanagementsystems (ZR2MS) ergibt sich aus der Referenzarchitektur zur anwendungssystemübergreifend konsistenten Zugriffssteuerung (A2KS).

隨著網際網路的發展，使得現實生活中隨處可見全球資訊網的應用，也因此改革了原有商業經營的面貌，尤其在電信產業中，許多企業開始將實體的商店模式，帶到虛擬的網際網路中，使得網際網路上的電子商務發展隨之增高，並帶給企業史無前例的經濟發展機會。起初電子商務的發展焦點在於客戶與企業的互動關係，漸漸的延伸到企業對企業的相互支援，而商業流程管理與服務導向架構的崛起，也使得電子商務的發展焦點轉移至發展整合商業流程的電子化服務議題上，更希望藉此提供給客戶更多元化、有用的功能服務。 電子商務與其資訊發展技術一直以來被電信業者所重視（例如中華電信、新加坡電信及美國電信技術等公司），並且開始在網際網路上建置專屬的電子商務環境。雖然在這些世界級電信公司的資訊環境中，都有其專屬的營運支援系統，但都缺乏共同標準的架構與流程設計方法，因此電信管理論壇組織開始進行下一代的營運支援系統規劃，稱之為「下一代營運系統軟體」。有很多的研究中心及廠商也提供以下一代營運系統軟體為主的相關服務，並以服務導向架構為基礎來協助整合商業流程。 在過去企業都利用人工的方式來整合內部相關的服務功能，並透過各種資訊整合技術將相關的工作連接起來，但是此種整合曠日廢時，僅侷限在某些專屬服務範圍，倘若要增加其他加值性服務，將會耗費更多的成本與時間。企業應用系統整合的出現就是要解決此類的整合性問題，透過點對點的介面方式，將各應用系統或程式連接起來。隨著多樣性服務需求與多種異質性系統的增加，讓企業應用系統整合服務已不能符合企業所需，因此開始將商業流程與服務導向架構觀念引入企業應用系統整合服務之中，希望能建置一個以流程為主的服務。商業流程與服務導向架構都具備有系統間的彈性連接與雙向溝通能力，藉由其所提供的電子服務，使得應用程式間可以相互溝通。 為了要有效地強化商業流程管理與服務導向架構的優點，本研究將使用企業服務匯流排來與中間軟體作一有效的結合，並維持以流程為中心的服務，提供給企業應用整合系統，所有的電子化服務皆能透過此管道來相互溝通。 在本論文中，我們將展示一個新的研究架構、共同合作模式及共同合作層級來闡述此研究，並利用三個實例來說明與驗證此架構之可行性，且把焦點放在如何以新一代營運系統軟體標準為基礎來發展國際性電信公司所關心的敏捷性電子化服務之研究。 / The Internet’s widespread popularity and the ubiquity of the World Wide Web have revolutionized the face of business, especially in the telecommunication industry. Many enterprises have moved their place of business from the physical store to the virtual store on the Internet. Therefore, electronic commerce (e-commerce) has sprung up in this era and has provided enterprises of all sizes with unprecedented opportunities for economic growth. Initially, electronic commerce focused only on business-to-customer web interaction and on business-to-business web interaction. With the emergence of business process management and of service-oriented architecture, the focus has shifted to the development of electronic services (e-services) that integrate business processes and that diversify functionalities available to customers. The potential of electronic commerce and its information technology also has attracted some telecommunication corporations—for example, Chunghwa Telecom, Singtel Telecom, and AT&T. They have built their electronic commerce environment on the Internet, too. Most of these worldwide telecom corporations have many kinds of operations support systems (OSSs) in the backend environment. Hence, TeleManagement Forum (TMF) has started to consider the next generation of OSS which is called the New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS). There are also many vendors or research centers that consider how to provide the NGOSS-centric service to the users and to integrate the business process based on service-oriented architecture. Initially, enterprises had to manually integrate services so that they could work together. However, this integration required considerable time and cost, and it worked only for the specific services that were manually linked. Adding additional services required even more effort. And then, enterprise application integration (EAI) solved these kinds of problems by working via point-to-point interfaces. As enterprises use more applications to provide additional services, the amount of integration that various tasks require to have mushroomed and the system has become hard to maintain. In order to increase the performance of EAI, some enterprises have developed the concept of business process management and service-oriented architecture. The chief objective is to implement relevant process-centric services. Business process management and service-oriented architecture enable flexible connectivity and communication among applications by representing each as e-services that let applications communicate readily with one another. In order to effectively strengthen business process management’s and service-oriented architecture’s benefits, we use an enterprise service bus (ESB) that, by functioning as middleware glue, holds process-centric services together and allows for communication between enterprise applications. In this thesis, we present a research framework, a collaboration model, and a collaboration layers to describe the method. Then, we use several illustrations to explain the generality of our method, and we focus on how international telecom corporations have become to concern with the agility, the leanness, and the integration underlying e-services integration based on NGOSS.