SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

FP6 Project FUSION Business process FUSION based on

Semantically-enabled Service-Oriented Business Applications

Dimitrios Kourtesisdkourtesis@seerc.org

SEERC Information & Communication Technologies Research Track

3rd Know How Transfer Event - 09.03.2007

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

• Multidisciplinary, international, non-profit research centre based in Thessaloniki

• Jointly established in 2003 by: The University of Sheffield (UK) CITY Liberal Studies (GR)

• SEERC’s mission is to support the development of SEE by conducting pure and applied research in, and for the region

The South East European Research Centre

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Research at SEERC

• Research at SEERC addresses the broad range of economic, technological, political, social and cultural challenges facing an enlarged and enlarging Europe

• Research is organised in four Research Tracks: Enterprise, Innovation and Regional Development Information & Communication Technologies Governance, Politics and Society Risk and well-being

• Research Clusters within the ICT Research Track: Intelligent Systems Software Engineering Information & Knowledge Management

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Areas of expertise in the ICT RT

• Formal Methods: Formal Specification Languages, Modelling and Model Checking for Safety

Critical and Large Scale Systems, Formal Verification and Testing• Artificial Intelligence:

Multi-Agent Systems, Biologically Inspired Computation, Logic Programming, Neural Networks, Semantic Web Technologies

• Software Engineering: Software Engineering Processes, Agile Software Development Methodologies,

Object-Oriented Technologies, Service Oriented Architectures, Web Service Technologies

• Educational Informatics: Virtual Learning Environments, Multiple Teaching Strategies, Networked and

Ambient Learning, Learning Management Systems • Health Informatics:

Health Information Management, Electronic Health Records, Affective and Physiological Computing

• Information Systems: Analysis, Design, and Management of IS, Business Information Systems,

Geographical Information Systems, Information Retrieval, Information Security

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

FP6 Project FUSION

Business process fusion based on semantically-enabled service-oriented

business applications

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Motivation for FUSION

• Enterprises nowadays rely on heterogeneous business applications to fulfil their needs (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc)

• Even the simplest business task necessitates some interoperability and information exchange among different business applications

• This is not easy to accomplish, due to heterogeneity in system interfaces, data syntax, and message structures: Applications come from different software manufacturers Applications are designed with different requirements in mind

• Interoperability of software systems is one of the oldest problems in computing

• Enterprise Application Integration is an important challenge

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Motivation for FUSION

• Existing approaches for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) are very resource intensive Gartner Research: “35% of all IT spending is for application integration” Forrester Research: in some cases “50% of IT budget is spent on

interfacing”

• EAI projects require substantial resources that SMEs find difficult to cope with

• A recent move towards SOA has set a basis for improving this situation

• Nevertheless, EAI remains a laborious task the problem of heterogeneity at the system-level is resolved by using

standardised Web services, but the problem of heterogeneity at the data syntax and message structure

level is not addressed (still has to be tackled manually)

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Proposed solution

• Semantics can be used for modelling the system interfaces, data syntax, and message structures of heterogeneous service-oriented business applications in an explicit and unambiguous form

• This form of modelling can enable machines to “understand” and reason about the provided information, in order to automatically discover and compose services into business processes to achieve EAI

• A semantically-enriched approach to EAI will Lower the cost of integrating business applications and

interconnecting enterprises Enable enterprises to respond quickly and flexibly to market

changes Support business growth and increase the potential for an

improved return on IT investments

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

FUSION Project objectives

• FUSION aims to promote efficient business collaboration within and among enterprises by developing technologies for the semantic fusion of heterogeneous business applications

• FUSION will have a three-fold focus: Development of an innovative approach, methodology and

integration mechanism for the semantic integration of a heterogeneous set of service-oriented business applications

Validation of research results by developing proof-of-concept pilots in collaborative commerce in value networks across the Enlarged Europe (3 trans-national case studies)

Integration of European research activities in the areas of Business Process Management, Semantic Web and Web Services

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Project overview

• FUSION is a STREP funded under FP6 IST Call 4 Action Line: IST-2004-2.4.13 Strengthening the Integration of the ICT research effort in an

Enlarged Europe

• Project start date: February 1st 2006• Project end date: July 31st 2008• Project Cost: 4.36 million euro• Consortium comprises

14 partners from 5 European countries (Germany, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria)

research institutes, technology developers, innovation transfer bodies, and end-users

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

FUSION consortium

• Research Institutes:

• Technology Developers:

• End Users:

• Innovation Transfer bodies:

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Contribution of SEERC

• Development of the FUSION reference framework • Definition of the FUSION semantic integration

methodology• Development of a semantically extended UDDI Registry

for Web service discovery• Development of a framework for assessing the overall

FUSION solution, functionality of FUSION components and performance of the FUSION System on trials

• Trial application of the developed tools solutions within real-business conditions in the SEE region

• Establishment and management of the FUSION Special Interest Group, promoting collaboration and exchange of ideas among academia and industry in this field

SEERC - A Research Centre of the University of Sheffield and CITY Liberal Studies

Proposal success factors

• EAI is a real problem

• The objectives are ambitious, yet realistic

• Maturity level of the research technologies

• Building on the knowledge outcome of major research projects (DIP, ATHENA)

• Combination of novel research results with de-facto industry standards (e.g. WSDL, OWL, BPEL, UDDI)