Apparatus and Methods for Decomposing Service Processes and for Identifying Alternate Service Elements in Service Provider Environments

• US 20090248461A1
• Filed: 03/28/2008
• Published: 10/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/28/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bartsch, Christian, Grabarnik, Genady Y., Ward, Christopher, Shwartz, Larisa
• Granted Patent: US 9,613,324 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06312 Adjustment or analysis of established resource schedule, e.g. resource or task levelling, or dynamic rescheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]

Abstract

Methods, apparatus and computer program products decompose a service process into service process operations; filter the service operations based on at least one pre-determined criterion; identify at least one different service process operation to be used to replace an existing service process operation; and replace the existing service process operation with the at least one different service process operation. The service process can be decomposed using specific service features derived from reference service processes. The pre-determined criterion used to filter the service operations can constitute a service level; a service category; or a service process feature. A service process feature describes core functionality of the service.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a memory storing at least one computer program; and

processing apparatus configured to execute the at least one computer program, wherein when the at least one computer program is executed the system is configured to decompose a service process into service process operations;

to filter the service process operations based on at least one pre-determined criterion; and

to identify at least one different service process operation to be used to replace an existing service process operation.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein when the at least one computer program is executed the system is further configured to decompose the service process into service process operations using at least one service process feature derived from a reference service process.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the reference service process defines at least one of a pre- and post-condition associated with the reference service process.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein when the at least one computer program is executed the system is further configured to generate a graph-based model of the service process indicating at least one of dependencies between service process operations, roles and properties.

5. The system of claim 2 wherein to identify at least one different service process operation to be used to replace an existing service process operation further comprises:

to use the service process feature of the reference service process to identify a service process feature associated with the existing service process operation to be replaced; and

to identify candidate service process operations to be considered as replacements for the existing service process operation using the reference service process feature to identify candidate service process operations that share the service process feature.

6. The system of claim 3 wherein to identify at least one different service process operation to be used to replace an existing service process operation further comprises:

to use at least one of the pre- and post conditions associated with the reference service process to identify at least one of a pre- and post-condition associated with the existing service process operation to be replaced; and

to identify candidate service process operations to be considered as replacements for the existing service process operation using at least one of the pre- and post-conditions associated with the reference service process.

7. The system of claim 4 wherein to identify at least one different service process operation to be used to replace an existing service process operation further comprises:

to use at least one of the dependencies between service process operations, roles and properties indicated in the graph-based model of the service process to identify candidate service process operations to be considered as replacements for the existing service process operation.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein when the at least one computer program is executed the system is further configured to replace the existing service process operation with the at least one different service process operation.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the existing service process operation further comprises a plurality of service process operations which together constitute a service.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the at least one pre-determined criterion comprises a service level.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the at least one pre-determined criterion comprises a service category.

12. The system of claim 1 wherein the at least one pre-determined criterion comprises a service process feature.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the service process feature describes core functionality of the service process.

14. The system of claim 1 wherein when the at least one computer program is executed the system is further configured to create a model of the service process.

15. The system of claim 1 wherein when the at least one computer program is executed the system is further configured to identify at a least a part of the service process that should be changed.

16. The system of claim 15 wherein a predetermined criterion is used to identify the part of the service process that should be changed.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein the predetermined criterion concerns failure of the service process to meet an agreed-to service level.

18. The system of claim 16 wherein the predetermined criterion concerns availability of new service process operations to replace existing service process operations comprising the service process.

19. A computer program product comprising a computer readable memory medium storing a computer program, the computer program configured to be executed by processing apparatus, wherein when the computer program is executed operations are performed, the operations comprising:

decomposing a service process into service process operations;

filtering the service operations based on at least one pre-determined criterion; and

identifying at least one different service operations to be used to replace an existing service process operation.

20. A method comprising:

decomposing a service process into service process operations;

filtering the service process operations based on at least one pre-determined criterion; and

identifying at least one different service operation to be used to replace an existing service process operation.