Talk Abstracts and Speaker Biographies
Session A - Web Services
Abstract
The e-business team of Royal Dutch Shell, Netherlands, the Department of
Trade and Industry (DTI) in London UK and the Petrochemical Open Source
Software Corporation (POSC) in Houston, Texas participated in the development
of an demo project to show the benefits of Web services technology for the
automation of document exchange in a B2B scenario. The demo was created
by the IBM Hursley laboratories and the result presented to the e-business
delegates of the entire oil&gas industry at a meeting in London. This presentation
shows the motivation and benefits of deploying Web services in a B2B scenario,
how the project was developed and what typical business and technical hurdles
need to be surmounted. We will explain, what this project has achieved in
the specific environment of the DTI and Shell and describe the implementation
in detail. Finally we will also provide a demonstration to illustrate the
automated processes and their usage.
Biography
Anton (Tony) Fricko has joined IBM Austria in 1971 and has held a series
of programming positions in the first 6 IBM years. His engagements ranged
from commercial programming projects to relational database development
in international positions in London, England and Uithoorn, Netherlands
during the years 1976-81. Mr. Fricko also specialised in IBM's Virtual Machine
Operating system, again in local as well as international technical support
roles, working out of London in the years 1986-91. In 1991 he joined the
Networking Marketing group in Austria, focusing on systems management. From
1996-98 he was the Tivoli Sales Leader for Austria. In 1999 he joined the
IBM Java Marketing Team in United Kingdom, and is working out of IBM Hursley
at the Java Technology Centre. His current role is Program Manager for jStart
Emerging Technologies, where he assists customers all over Europe in the
adoption of new technologies, focusing on XML, EJBs, B2B Integration and
Web Services.
Abstract
RosettaNet (www.rosettanet.org) is a 400+ company global consortium that develop XML e-business standards. RosettaNet is widely recognized as the leader in developing and implementing B2B standards and accounts for one of the largest standards based global B2B trading networks. There are a number forces, both of technological and business, shaping the evolution of B2B across the Internet. From the business perspective, companies can grow network size and/or enhance the capabilities of the networks to get more value out from their investment. On the technology front there is a huge amount of interest and investment around web services and the dynamic discovery of service providers. In this talk we take stock of the state of the art in B2B across the Internet and consider the technology roadmap may evolve.Biography
Derek Coleman is Chief Technologist and Senior Director of Product Engineering & Development at RosettaNet, where he is on loan from Hewlett-Packard's Software Global Business Unit. Derek has overall responsibility for the RosettaNet consortium's development of PIP specifications. He oversees standards specification, technical architecture, standards convergence and the compliance programme. Derek represents Hewlett-Packard on the OASIS Technical Advisory Board and he is also a visiting Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kent. Prior to joining RosettaNet he managed an architecture team working with HP customer's using e-speak which was the world's first commercially available web services technology.
Session B - The Service Environment
Abstract
According to one common view, information security comes down to technical measures. Given better access control policy models, formal proofs of cryptographic protocols, approved firewalls, better ways of detecting intrusions and malicious code, and better tools for system evaluation and assurance, the problems can be solved.
In this talk, I will put forward a contrary view: information insecurity can be blamed at least as much on perverse incentives. Many, if not most, of the problems can be explained more clearly and convincingly using the language of microeconomics: network externalities, asymmetric information, moral hazard, adverse selection, liability dumping, and the tragedy of the commons.
Our knowledge and understanding of computer systems has been deepened by the application of many branches of mathematics. These range from the contributions based on mathematical logic by Rosser, Church, and others, to the use of number theory and complexity theory by the cryptology research community. The interaction between economics and the theory of system dependability is a new and rapidly growing field, which may enable us to add further insights from disciplines such as game theory.
Biography
Ross Anderson leads the security group at the Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, where is a Reader in Security Engineering. He is a Fellow of both the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. He has well known research publications on a number of security applications, including medical privacy and banking systems, as well as on the underlying technologies, such as cryptography and tamper resistance. He is the author of the definitive book Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems.
One of his more influential papers was 'The Eternity Service' - a filestore distributed over the whole internet so as to make it highly resistant to censorship and sabotage. This inspired the development of peer-to-peer systems such as freenet, gnutella, and mojonation.
Ross Anderson also chairs the Foundation for Information Policy and Research, Europe's premier information policy think-tank.
Abstract
Financial institutions are increasingly using XML as a de-facto
standard to represent and exchange information about their products
and services. Their aim is to process transactions quickly,
cost-effectively, and with minimal human intervention. Due to the
nature of the financial industry, inconsistencies inevitably appear
throughout the lifetime of a financial transaction and their
resolution introduces cost and time overheads.
We give an overview of our particular domain of interest: the
Over-The-Counter (OTC) financial derivatives sector. We propose a
taxonomy of the different classes of inconsistencies and present a
case study illustrating how XML technologies and in particular the
Financial Product Markup Language (FpML) can be deployed to integrate
preexisting enterprise information systems. We also give account of
how xlinkit, a generic technology for managing the consistency of
distributed documents, can be used to detect transaction
inconsistencies and to automatically generate human-readable
reports. Finally we discuss how xlinkit can potentially be integrated
in a preexisting information system infrastructure.
Biography
Wolfgang's research interests are in the area of software engineering for distributed systems, with a strong focus on middleware-based and mobile systems. Wolfgang authored a successful Wiley textbook on "Engineering Distributed Objects". He was PC co-chair of the EDO 2000 Workshop and will be PC Co-Chair of the Automated Software Engineering conference in 2002. Wolfgang is also a Partner in Zuhlke Engineering Ltd. (www.zuhlke.com), through whom he channels technology transfer and consulting activities.
Abstract
Biography
Santosh Shrivastava
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/santosh.shrivastava/
We consider an emerging class of distributed applications that make use
of a variety of Internet services provided by different organisations.
This naturally leads to interactions for information sharing that cross
organisational boundaries. However, despite the need to share
information and services, organisations will want to maintain their
autonomy and privacy. Organisation will therefore require their
interactions with other organisations to be strictly controlled and
policed. We are assuming that the organisations involved might not trust
each other, so we need to examine what infrastructure level support is
required for interactions between two or more mutually distrusting
organisations. Further, the infrastructure should support interaction in
a hostile environment: interaction, between strangers over open
networks. These demanding requirements pose very interesting research
problems that we will examine.
Santosh Shrivastava was appointed a Professor of Computing Science,
University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1986; he leads the Distributed
Systems Research Group. He received his Ph.D. in computing science from
Cambridge in 1975. His research interests are in the areas of
distributed systems, real-time systems, fault tolerance and application
of transaction and workflow technologies to e-commerce. His group is
well known as the developers of an innovative distributed transaction
system, called Arjuna and a CORBA based dependable workflow system for
the Internet. Together with his colleagues he set up Arjuna Solutions
Ltd in 1998 in Newcastle to productise Arjuna transaction and workflow
technologies. Now part of Hewlett-Packard, HP-Arjuna Labs
(www.arjuna.com) is a centre of excellence for transactional technology.
Session D - Modelling
Abstract
The term "Middleware" entered the IT lexicon a decade ago, as
businesses were increasingly forced to build distributed applications to
share data from multiple sources inside their organisations. Over the last
ten years the scope of those applications has widened and deployed middlewares
have become legacies, so that increasingly businesses now have to integrate
multiple middlewares rather than multiple databases. Now the integration
problem is spreading across the Internet, and eBusiness integration forces
us to recognise the necessity for multiple middleware platforms; CORBA and
EJB for integrating middle-tier and back-end systems, HTTP/HTML links the
desktops to the enterprise systems, while XML and Web services are increasingly
being used to carry eBusiness transactions over the 'net. Each middleware
is suited to its deployment niche, and somehow we have to make them all
work together. This talk outlines OMG's MDA approach to designing applications
that use multiple middleware platforms in concert to benefit from the strengths
of each, as well as accomodating future middleware platforms.
Biography
Andrew has overall responsibility for OMG's technology adoption process,
and also chairs the Architecture Board, the group of distinguished technical
contributors from OMG member organizations which oversees the technical
consistency of OMG's specifications. From 1992 to 1996 he also chaired the
OMG's Object Request Broker Task Force, which was responsible for the development
and deployment of the CORBA 2 specification. Previously Andrew spent six
years with the ANSA core team in Cambridge researching distributed object
architectures, specialising in distributed object type systems.
Abstract
Building systems to support e-business must be based on the needs of the
business. A business also needs to have a handle on its strategies, processes,
organization etc (what was called BPR). This drives toward the need for
models of the business itself and the mapping through to the systems that
support it. This presentation will cover the use of metamodeling capabilities
to design business metamodels and link them through to the technology metamodels
such as UML for system specification. And then provide ongoing management
and communication. It will focus on the use of the OMG's Meta Object Facility
(MOF) standard as a unifying basis for the metamodels (as indeed it already
is for technical metamodels such as UML) and look at the tool implications
of using this. Finally it will cover the evolution of the standards and
look forward to the Java Metadata Interface, MOF2 and UML2.
Biography
Pete Rivett is CTO of Adaptive, a company specializing in the application
of metadata and repositories to enterprise modeling and bridging the gap
between business and IT. Pete has spent his career in modeling and the development
of repository and metadata management software - including at ICL, N&P
Building Society and Adaptive which he co-founded in 1997. He works with
customers on leading edge projects and is a regular conference speaker.
He is active in the Object Management Group (OMG) where he sits on the Architecture
Board. He is directly involved in producing standards such as Common Warehouse
Metamodel (CWM), XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), Unified Modeling Language
(UML), Enterprise Distributed Object Computing (EDOC) and Software Portfolio
Management Facility.
Abstract
In this talk, we explore the way in which requirements on a business, such
as the products to be delivered to customers, lead to a business architecture
that can be allocated to software and people. This leads in a natural way
to an abstract software architecture, that must in turn be mapped to the
implementation platform. The result is an alignment of software architecture
to business architecture, subject to the constraints of the implementation
platform. We illustrate this process in a combined top-down and middle-out
way. The approach is top-down, because desired business functions must be
known before a software architecture can be decided upon. At the same time
the process is middle-out, because design decisions at a lower level usually
require the designer to backtrack to a higher level to refine design decisions
already made. We point out the contribution of structured and object-oriented
methods in this area and identify areas where further research is needed.
Biography
Prof. Dr. Roel Wieringa holds the chair of information systems at the University
of Twente, the Netherlands. His research interests lie in methods for software
system requirements engineering and architecture design, and in the application
of these methods to distributed information systems, varying from groupware
to workflow and e-commerce systems. His research includes the development
of advanced tools to support design methods, including tools to simulate
and explore possible system designs. His book on Requirements Engineering
was published in 1996 by Wiley, and a book on Design Methods for Reactive
Systems will be published in 2002 by Morgan Kaufmann. He edited several
other books and published over 50 papers on software design methods. He
has been involved in several national and international research projects
and is currently involved in the e-commerce research programme at the University
of Twente.
Abstract SPRINT (Salford Process Reengineering Involving New Technology) was devised
as a way of helping analysts and service providers to think through the
implications of change in the public sector. It has been a crucial component
in the development of the highly regarded e-government programme in Salford.
A key feature of SPRINT is the use of simple process modelling techniques
to depict 'before' and 'after' scenarios. The empirical evidence suggests
that their key value is in helping the various stakeholders to understand
the processes being investigated. Biography
Peter Kawalek
Manchester Business School
www.mbs.ac.uk/research/search/staff.cfm?ID=25
Public services are being remade. The spark for this comes from the disruptive
potential of new technology. Governments the world over have already decided
that the question is not 'whether' but 'how.' In other words, how do they
best harness the potential of the new technologies in order to promote the
best outcomes for society?
Moreover, it has been found that the modelling activity becomes the forum
for the expression of creative tension between innovators seeking the 'most
radical' solutions, and a more cautious lobby, seeking 'realistic' solutions.
As such the simplicity of the process modelling techniques used has itself
become highly regarded. Attempts to add greater sophistication have been
energetically resisted.
Dr Peter Kawalek studied Computer Science at the University of Manchester
before moving to Warwick Business School and thence to Manchester Business
School. He has worked with industry across a range of sectors (e.g. telecommunications,
insurance, railways). Since 1998 he has specialised in the government sector,
working with agencies in the UK and Ireland. He co-authored the SPRINT methodology
for Salford City Council. His work also includes the design of a web-based
system for supporting decision makers (SOLAR), an open source repository
for the e-government community (www.shareideas.gov.uk) and a multi-agency
data sharing solution for use amongst community safety partnerships in Lancashire
(MADE). He has published two books and a number of journal and conference
papers.
Session E - Futures Perspectives
Abstract
For a full decade, money has poured into e-business and related initiatives: ERP, Y2K, dot com subsidiaries and CRM. Now, the investment spigot has been turned off; e-business is a discretionary expenditure that must be justified in terms of reduced risk, shorter lead times, and concrete payoff. This session looks at where e-business can offer that. It focuses on three payoff priorities: (1) the phased shift to the new business Transformation Architectures enabled by Web services that contrast to today's client/server Operations Architectures, (2) the massive through fragmented demand for m-commerce in areas that leverage three key elements of business success: cutting cycle time, leveraging customer-facing processes in the field and at customer point of contact, knowledge mobilization at worker point of need and (3) a "beachhead" strategy for inovation that balance investment risk with proven payoff.Biography
Peter Keen is the Chairman of Keen Innovations, and Senior Research Feelow for Differentis, UK. He has served on the faculties of Harvard, MIT, and Wharton, with visiitng positions at Stokholm University, Duke, Fordham, Oxford and the London Business School. He is currently Professor at Delft Technical University. He is the author of over twnety books that all address linking business and technology at the senior management policy and strategic planning level. His most recent books all addrees e-business. They include: From .Com to .Profit, The eProcess Edge, Trust by Design: Building E-Commerce Relationships, and The Freedom Economy, a book that addresses m-commerce opportunities. His current research and writing focus on next generation DSS, the new architectures for next generation e-business and businiess process management, and excellence in e-government.