B USINESS D OMAIN A NALYSIS AND S PECIFICATION

Business domain analysis and specific ation is concerned with the identification and specification of the different administrative domains, the relationships, the human roles involved and the responsibilities that they have. This phase consists of the following key steps:

• Business model and relationships specification,

• Role and responsibilities specification.

In the following sub-sections the previous mentioned steps are further discussed and analysed.

4.3.1 Business Model and Relationships

The business model is specified as a set of different administrative domains having specific relationships. The business model for the agent-based platform for the management of dynamic VE consists of the following administrative domains:

• Customer, is the domain that has subscribed to the services provided by the VE and is allowed to use them,

• VE representative, is the domain that represents the VE to the outside world, i.e. to the customers, and provides the VE services to them. The VE representative is the responsible domain where the end-users are logged in, deploy and manage the provided services, i.e. the business processes,

• VE Candidate/Partner is the domain that registers its service offerings into the marketplace and negotiates with other VE partners on-demand to establish business relationships. When a successful negotiation has been achieved between a VE partner and a VE candidate partner, then this domain acquires the status of the VE partner. The VE partner authorises and authenticates business process requests, based on the negotiated contracts, and executes and manages the business processes on behalf of other domains,

• Virtual Marketplace, is the domain that provides registration and selection services for VE candidate partners. This domain is responsible for administrating service types and service offers and for managing the daily operations of the marketplace.

The logical relationships among these domains are depicted in the following picture.

C u s t o m e r D o m a i n

V i r t u a l E n t e r p r i s e R e p r e s e n t a t i v e 1

V i r t u a l M a r k e t P l a c e

P r o v i d e r 2

V i r t u a l E n t e r p r i s e P a r t n e r 3

4

V i r t u a l E n t e r p r i s e P a r t n e r

3 4

5

Figure 6: Business Model and Relationships

It should be noted that the VE representative domain and the VE Candidate/Partner provide similar services to each other and they deploy the same mechanisms. The main different is that the VE representative actually represents the VE to the external world, i.e. to the customers.

Otherwise, the services, roles, responsibilities and internal components of both domains are identical from technical point of view. This means also that one domain can be VE representative for one VE and a normal VE partner for another VE, i.e. the roles of the VE representative and VE partner are symmetrical and independent of the underlying services.

Based on the previous business model, the following logical relationships among the domains can be specified:

• Customer - VE representative (1): the customer domain deploys all the provided services from the VE representative in a transparent way, i.e. the customer does not know the existence of the VE partners. The customer can log in into the system using a standard web browser and can start a business process, get a status report about a running processes, and manage existing processes, i.e. suspend, resume or terminate a process. Finally, when a running process completes, the result of the process is returned to the customer.

• VE representative - Virtual marketplace (2): the VE domain uses the marketplace to register local business processes and to search for potential VE candidate partners that can provide a service. More specifically, the VE representative can register, de-register or modify an existing business process offer stored in the virtual marketplaces. Additionally, the VE representative can search the virtual marketplace based on some constraints and get a list of potential VE candidate partners that can provide a specific service. The requirements imposed by this relationship are reflected into the specifications of the virtual marketplace ontology.

• VE partner - Virtual marketplace (3): the meaning of this relationship is the same like the previous one except the fact that the VE partner performs these operations. Additionally, in this relationship only the registration and administration of business process offers into the virtual marketplace is provided and not the searching operations. The requirements imposed by this relationship are reflected into the specifications of the virtual marketplace ontology.

• VE representative – VE Candidate/Partner (4): the VE representative starts a negotiation process with a VE candidate partner. This negotiation process results into an electronic contract that regulates the co-operation among the domains. As soon as the contract has been established, the VE representative can start the agreed remote process, resume, suspend, or terminate it upon request of a customer. The requirements imposed by this relationship are reflected into the specifications of the inter-domain and negotiation ontology.

• VE Partner – VE Candidate/Partner (5): the meaning of this relationship is the same like the previous one. In that case, the VE partner negotiates with one or more VE Candidate providers and selects one as VE partner. Then, the execution and management of remote business processes can be done. This relationships enables the dynamic creation of complex VEs where the partner outsource some of their business processes on-demand to other capable providers. The requirements imposed by this relationship are reflected into the specifications of the inter-domain and negotiation ontology.

It should be noted that the relationships 2 and 3 are similar in the sense that the technical realization and the required specification is the same. However, in the case of relationship 2, the domain that deploys this relationship is the VE Representative, while in the case of relationship 3, the domain that deploys this relationship is the VE Partner.

In the same way, the relationships 4 and 5 are also similar in the sense that the technical requirements imposed by them are the same. However, the difference is only semantically and it is related with the names and business position of the domains that deploy these relationships, namely the VE Representative and VE Partner.

4.3.2 Roles and Responsibilities

Having specifying the key business domains of the platform and the key relationships that they have, the individual human roles that exist in every domain can be specified.

In the VE representative and VE Candidate/Partner domain the role of the Business Process Analyst exists. This person is responsible for the specification of the business processes of this domain by deploying the business process definition language. The analyst also specifies which processes will be provided by this domain, i.e. local processes and which processes will be deployed remotely and dynamically by other partners, i.e. remote processes. Additionally, the analyst specifies the terms and conditions concerning the offering of local processes to potential partners. Based on these terms and conditions, the registration of local business processes to the virtual marketplace is done. The terms and conditions are actually logical constraints that relate process properties with certain min or max values. More specifically, this role performs the following operations:

• creation, modification, and deletion of business processes using the business process definition language,

• specification, modification, and deletion of certain terms and conditions related to the provision of local business processes to potential partners. These terms and conditions will be used during the negotiation process with potential partners,

In the Virtual Marketplace domain the role of the administrator exists. This person is responsible for specifying and managing the service types that have been created in the virtual marketplace. The main operations that this role performs are:

• creation, modification, list, and deletion of a service type,

In the Customer domain the role of the end-user exists. This person initially subscribes to the services provided by this domain and gains access to them. This person has no particular responsibility except to log in and use the provided services. The main operations that this role performs are:

• log into the system by using a standard web browser,

• initiation of a business process and monitor the status of an existing business process,

• suspension, resumption, or termination of a running business process provided by different VE partners.

Recalling the life-cycle model of dynamic VEs, the distribution of the above roles in each phase is the following:

• In Business Process specification and Registration phase, the Business Process Analysts for both the VE representative and the VE partner participates in the specification of the business processes, administration of the registration of local processes into the marketplace, and specification of the terms and conditions of the negotiation process for each local process.

• In Business Process management phase, no human role is involved. On the contrary, the different autonomous agents undertake the responsibility to execute business processes, to search for potential partners dynamically, to negotiate for the selection of the best partner, and to authorise the usage of processes based on the established electronic contracts. The only human role involved is the end-user, from the customer domain, that can query the status of a process, suspend, resume, or terminate a running process.