Business Process Management for Convergent Services Provisioning Using the
SUPER Platform
Jacek Frankowski1, Hanna Kupidura2, Paweł Rubach2, Ewelina Szczekocka2
[Jacek.Frankowski2;Hanna.Kupidura;Pawel.Rubach;Ewelina.Szczekocka]@telekomunikacja.pl
1
Telekomunikacja Polska S.A., R&D Department, 19 Głogowska Str. 60-702 Poznań, Poland
tel. +48 61 864 04 85 / fax. +48 61 864 11 12
2
Telekomunikacja Polska S.A., R&D Department, 7 Obrzeżna Str. 02-691 Warsaw, Poland
tel. +48 22 699 50 95 / fax. +48 22 857 99 86
1. Introduction
Convergence of media and services is a major trend
in today’s ICT (Information and Communication Technology) market. Companies are under pressure every
day more and more by the competitive, global market to
offer innovative services, for many customers, efficiently in a short time-to-market manner. Thus flexibility and market responsiveness turns to become the driving force in the telecom area these days. In order to cope
with the abovementioned challenges there are various
organizational models that are being proposed and deployed within businesses, especially large corporations.
In the paper we bring into the light the real world
case of a convergent offer – the Quad-Play offering –
and we envision creating a domain ontology on the
basis of available telecommunications standards, on the
one hand, and, the business knowledge represented by
practitioners from the industry, on the other hand. We
argue that this approach, which leads subsequently to
semantic description of business processes, would enable large telecom organizations to be more responsive
in terms of time and resources necessary to introduce
new services (especially convergent ones) and adapt
existing processes to the changing environment. We
envision the Quad-Play scenario as a model of dynamic
processes where semantic technologies developed
within the SUPER1 platform are expected to support
interoperability and reveal their abilities in integration
and automation of BPM in the ICT area. The paper is
organized as follows: in the first section the general idea
of collaborative environment for convergent services is
presented, followed by the business scenario and an
infrastructure overview. Subsequent sections depict the
role of semantics in the information and processes modelling with a special emphasis on the analysed use case,
and application of SUPER platform for business process
description, web service annotation and composition of
semantically annotated services. We present and discuss
particular SUPER platform components in the use case
context. We conclude with addressing ontology and
semantic business processes adoption perspectives as
well as possible constraints.
1
www.ip-super.org
2. Business Scenario Overview
Quad-Play is defined as an offering that provides
customers with four different service lines in one bundle. The package includes voice over IP (VoIP), IP
based television (IPTV), video on-demand (VoD) and
mobile voice and data services.
With VoIP telephony service customers can perform voice IP calls (establishing and answering IP
calls). Using of this service requires broadband internet
access. This service is realised based on specialised
service platform. IPTV service provides customers with
TV transfer through the fixed broadband internet connection. VoD offers watching selected movies from a
remote library by transferring them over the fixed
broadband line connection. Mobile offering consists of
voice and data transfer package and it can be optionally
extended by adding mobile TV.
As may be concluded from above, the scenario involves three different business entities: fixed line operator, mobile operator and content provider. Their business processes are required to exchange information in a
formal way, thus forming an integrated workflow. The
BPMN diagram [BPMN, 2006] envisioning detailed
business process model of the convergent Quad-Play
offer is shown on Figure 1. The presumption is made
that customer may be provisioned with the Quad-Play
bundle by both fixed and mobile provider. This enforces
mutual flow of verification data between both entities.
After initial necessary steps comprising customer validation and verification in both fixed and mobile operator’s customer care systems the case is created, i.e. order
is issued. From that moment onwards three business
entities are employed in the process since content provider also issues an order, which is associated with
content related services (IPTV, VoD) that are being
offered. Information concerning content options agreed
on with the customer must feed back the fixed operator’s process to activate service platforms and the billing
configuration. After successful services activation on
both fixed and mobile platforms the processes eventually conclude with the billing activation.
Figure 1 The BPMN model of Quad-Play scenario prepared using WSMO Studio
The BPMN diagram is prepared using WSMO2
Studio, the tool designed for process modelling, association of semantic descriptions with process tasks, and
dynamic composition of semantic web services (SWS)
from the business process model. The diagram is serialised in form of an ontology (Business Process Modelling Ontology (BPMO) [SUPER D1.1]) using Web
Service Modelling Language (WSML).
3. Domain Related Background
3.1. Ontologies for Telco Domain
Collaborative approach to ontology development in
telco domain has been described in detail in [Frankowski et al., 2007]. Design lifecycle and methodology are
ontology development-related issues, lying behind our
work. The ontology lifecycle and design methodology
assumed in the SUPER project is described in detail in
[SUPER, D8.1]. That approach has been accepted by
the SUPER project forum for generic telecommunication framework (YATOSP3) development. The methodology that has been accepted to develop these ontologies
is based on Methontology [Staab et al., 2001]. Two
main kinds of telecom ontologies are considered. The
Domain Ontology provides, according to [Almeida et
al., 2002], vocabularies concerning domain concepts
together with their attributes, relationships among the
2
www.wsmo.org
Yet Another Telecom Ontology, Service and Process framework
3
activities in that domain and elementary rules governing
that domain. The Process Ontology is called DomainTask Ontology and describes the terms related to generic tasks or activities, which are provided by specialising the terms in the top-level ontologies.
3.2. Related Standards
The development of generic ontologies for the telecommunication domain is based upon the TMF standards. The forum commits its efforts to practical solutions of improving the management and operations
within the information and communications services.
NGOSS (Next Generation Operations Support Systems)
is a TMF initiative, a comprehensive, integrated framework for developing, procuring and deploying operational and business support systems and software [TMF,
2004b]. The Shared Information/Data (SID) model
provides a common language for communicating concerns of four major groups of constituents represented
by four NGOSS Views [TMF, 2004c]. The SID information model is a representation of business concepts,
their characteristics and relationships, described in an
implementation independent manner. The enhanced
Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is the ongoing TMF
initiative to deliver a business process model or framework, as generically as possible to be organization,
technology and service independent, for use by service
providers and others within the telecommunications
industry [TMF, 2004a]. It describes all the enterprise
processes required by a service provider and analyzes
them to different levels of detail according to their significance and priority for the business. In Figure 2. there
is an excerpt from domain ontology showing the mappings of terms from SID to telco domain related to the
analysed process. SID concepts are extended with domain related terms. The structure maintains also the
relations among SID concepts (product, product offering, specification and bundle). More details may be
found in [SUPER, D1.1] and [Frankowski et al., 2007].
4. Semantic Business Processes
Semantic Business Process Management (sBPM)
technology, developed and deployed within the SUPER
platform, is about to offer tools and techniques which
can solve many of the problems related to current shortcomings of EAI and SOA. sBPM technology gives new
opportunities in terms of significant increase in flexibility and dynamics of process management (e.g. through
adaptive resource allocation, ad-hoc decisions in process flows, dynamic process composition, detecting conflicts or constraints violations in composite process
models, real-time discovery of business partners and
automatic mediation between different business processes) [Weber, 2007], [SUPER D3.2]. Detailed description of sBPM conceptual framework may be found in
[Wetzstein et al. 2007]. Other important advantages of
sBPM are new optimisation and analytical opportunities
(enhanced possibilities to query business processes
space). In the prototype, which supports selected business processes of an integrated telecommunication operator related to service delivery to customers – we
implement two out of four lifecycle phases of sBPM,
namely modelling and configuration. Such proof of
concept should demonstrate the advantages of Semantic
Business Process Management approach and present the
usability of the available platform and tools developed
by SUPER project partners. Based on ontological descriptions of processes, namely Business Function Ontology, there are semantic terms (business goals) assigned to process tasks and semantic annotations of web
services defined. These annotations allow automatic
composition of SWS actually performing the business
process, or parts of the process, which has been previously modelled. The tool proves its usability currently
for VoIP process only, but demonstrates capability for
the application to Quad-Play – a complex collaborative
environment, with multiple participants.
4.1. Methodology Perspective
The use case described above covers the modelling
and the configuration phases.
Figure 2 describes the functionalities covered by TP
use case and shows how it is implemented in terms of
functionalities supported by the SUPER platform as
defined by the SUPER methodology [SUPER, D7.4].
As indicated in the
Figure 2 the two pools are distinguished with respect to the separate scenarios using particular modelling and configuration functionalities. There is follow-
ing scenario underlying the usage of indicated functionalities of SUPER methodology: Business analysts responsible for process management in telecom operator
draw many processes using various tools such as Aris,
iGraphx, Tibco, etc. Many of these tools offer some
export functions allowing to serialise process models
into the XPDL format, which is portable among tools
supporting BPMN. Although several inconsistencies
may be found among XPDL format generated by particular tools, in general it is possible to read and interpret the serialised process and translate it into BPMO,
which is the process representation standard in WSMO.
The BPMO process model is then stored in the library.
The second scenario begins when another analyst
needs to redesign the process model. The analyst may
subsequently transform it into semantically annotated
business process (SBP model) and then prepare executable specification of the BPMO. In detail the scenario
performs following steps and applies functionalities as
below:
- Discovering an existing process in the library and
uploading it into the modelling tool;
- Modifying the process model in the WSMO tool.
The process is represented graphically in BPMN
and modification in particular means assigning
business goals from the Business Goals Ontology to
process tasks;
- Storing semantically annotated business model
back in the BPMO;
- Composition of tasks – which in general consists in
matching appropriate Semantic Web Services
(SWS) from SWS repository to process tasks
trough satisfying business goals assigned to these
tasks by analyst in previous step;
- Again, composed business process model is stored
as BPMO;
- In order to obtain executable specification the
BPMO description is transformed into sBPEL and,
afterwards, into BPEL4SWS to ultimately deploy
the process over Semantic Service Bus [SUPER,
D7.4].
In the following subsection a detailed explanation
of abovementioned components is provided. Nevertheless from methodological point of view some of described steps require clarification. There are two semantic components revealed in the
Figure 2, namely TP business goals and TP domain
ontology. As mentioned in 3.1 they are part of YATOSP
framework and the former one represents business objectives’ library, defined by analysts from business point
of view, while the latter is corporate domain-level description appropriate for TP. Business goals represent a
set of pre- and postconditions that are to be met before
and after a given task starts and accomplishes. Both
ontological components are indispensable for the composition phase, when they are exploited by reasoner to
match SWS to process tasks. Analogically to business
goals SWS are web services annotated semantically, i.e.
contain pre- and postcondition sections created by either
business or IT specialists based on TP domain ontology,
including the cohesion check to TP business goals.
Having passed the methodological background of
the SUPER platform now we focus on architectural
view in which components interactions are envisioned.
Figure 2 The use case implementation in terms of functionalities as defined by the SUPER methodology
4.2. Architecture perspective
In the following section we describe the implementation of the presented use case in terms of components
interactions as defined by the SUPER architecture
(Figure 3).
In the centre of the component usage framework is
a process user. The user interacts with SUPER components through an interface component – the SBP Modelling Tool, namely WSMO Studio. From implementation
point of view most components are integrated with the
tool as plug-ins.
The first interaction the user makes with modelling
tool is import and translation of XPDL-serialised process definition into the BPMO. The translation is enriched with some elements of consistency check which
verifies if the provided definition is a correct BPMN
representation, it does not provide however any kind of
compliancy check from business and / or logical point
of view.
Storage of business process model in BPMO is provided by Semantic Business Process Library (SBPL)
which is API-accessed repository. The library allows to
store and retrieve a required process model and to retrieve a bundle of processes (sub processes, process
parts) as well, as a result of a query from discoverer.
The Discoverer component provides retrieval mechanisms that are responsible for auto completion of a
process in design time. In particular case, it is possible
to auto complete customer verification part of a process
if the verification phase is common for several existing
processes.
Process Composer is the component already mentioned in the previous section, it enables reasoning features for matching semantically annotated web services
to process tasks. Composer uses TP ontologies and
BPMO representation of a process. When the process is
eventually composed, i.e. appropriate SWS are assigned
to process tasks, it is going to be translated from BPMO
to semantic BPEL (sBPEL) using the BPMO-to-sBPEL
Transformation component It is also used to retrieve
ontologies required by Composer.
The final stage of a modelling and configuration
phases within SUPER framework is the serialisation of
sBPEL, i.e. transforming the business process in sBPEL
into BPEL4SWS. BPEL4SWS (Business Process Execution Language for Semantic Web Services) is an
XML serialisation of the sBPEL ontology. The sBPEL
extends the existing BPEL4WS standard to a reasonable
notion of a semantic business process. It provides a
semantic meaning to the elements in BPEL4WS such as
the partners involved in a business process and the messages exchanged, since the BPEL4SWS includes reference points to the ontological description in order to
relate the data exchanged to its ontological schema
(YATOSP framework). Mode detailed view of
BPEL4SWS and the SUPER architecture may be found
in [SUPER, D7.5].
Figure 3 The use case implementation in terms of components interactions
5. Conclusions
It is possible to improve the current implementation
of the fulfilment process of services such as VoIP,
IPTV, VoD in many ways and we expect that SUPER
infrastructure and sBPM tools will enable easier and
faster fulfilment process of complex, bundle services for
customers (due to dynamic composition and deployment
of complex business processes on the fly), faster and
less expensive development of new services (in terms of
implementing necessary changes in business processes),
easier integration with external partners (in terms of
automatic mediation), replacing unnecessary manual
work due to ad-hoc decisions in process flows and reuse
of process parts, improvement of quality of services by
detecting conflicts or constraints violations in complex
business processes, new optimisation and analytical
opportunities (possibility to query business processes
space with sophisticated competency questions).
To date only few test have been performed on business side and used limited number of services (SWS)
available. Although all abovementioned advantages
have been observed and tools exhibit their expected
features, there are three important issues to deal with in
further research: maturity of tools and their integration
as crucial factor for business users, testing over SWS
repository with possibly realistic number of SWS available, and implementation of execution environment in
order to test semantic business process running.
6. Acknowledgements
The work published in this article was partially
supported by the SUPER project (http://www.ipsuper.org/) under the EU 6th Framework Programme
Information Society Technologies Objective (contract
no. FP6-026850). Authors are grateful for the support
from the TP R&D Architecture & System Integration
Lab and from technical partners: Agata Filipowska,
Tomasz Kaczmarek of the Poznań University of Economics, Poland, and Sami Bhiri of DERI Galway, Ireland.
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