CETI Applied Research Colloquium

CETI Applied Research Colloquium

Program for Winter Quarter 2008

Dates: Fridays from January 4^th, 2008 - March. 14^th 2008

Time: 4:30 pm - 6:30 pm

Location: DL 298

Directions: http://www.osu.edu/map/building.php?building=279
 

Jan. 4^th: Dr. Anil Revankar, Wipro

Integrating Enterprise Methodologies

1.      Architecture to integrate industry best practices such as PMBOK, CMMI, ITIL across PLC/SDLC.

2.       Integration of regulatory and fiduciary requirements into industry best practices such as PMBOK, CMMI, ITIL

3.      Simulation of effort parameters in process redesign

4.      ROI models for process improvement

Progression:

1.      Wipro Technologies and Quality Consulting activities.20 minutes

2.      Introduction of topics - Current State of the Art. 15 minutes.

3.      Deep dive into topics. Challenges. Q&A. 1 hr.

Jan. 11^th: Prabir Nandi, IBM TJ Watson Business Intelligence Group

Model-driven Business Transformation

Business Process Re-engineering", "Operational Excellence", and "The Adaptable Organization" have all promised to transform the enterprise.  However, they have not been able to connect the board room vision to business operations and data center reality.  Enterprises are complex systems, and their transformation needs the kind of structured thinking engineers use for such problems.  As part of its evolution to services-oriented research, IBM Research has develop Model-Driven Business Transformation (MDBT) to address this need.  This approach extends software engineering's model-driven development technique to map an enterprise's strategic objectives to its operations, formally specifying business design and clearly reflecting business intent.  Just as object-oriented programming changed the paradigm of writing software, MDBT uses a new abstraction, the Business Artifact, to redefine business modeling.  By replacing classic verb-centric business process modeling with a noun-centric business operation modeling, MDBT has clarified business operations and simplified measurement and monitoring.  In its early applications, MDBT has reduced excess overhead in the operation of an IBM business service, fostered effective collaboration among product managers at a large retailer and enabled meaningful monitoring of data management for a major insurance company.  MDBT links its model of business operations to a platform-independent IT model which can be mapped to various platforms, and is especially well-suited for service-oriented architectures.  It has substantially reduced implementation effort and greatly simplified adaptation to changing business needs.  It works because it moves IT thinking up the stack from implementing infrastructure to improving operations.

Jan. 18th: Preethi Raghavan - Graduate Student, CETI

Semantic Wiki for Enterprise Architecture: Work being done towards developing a semantic wiki, which is based on an ontology that models complex enterprise/ project transactions. The ontology has been developed based on the RED transaction model. The semantic wiki will enable collaborative generation and maintenance of a formal knowledge representation. The knowledge representation will be done using various semantic web languages such as OWL, RDF and Jena - which is a Java based API for ontology management.
Some of the intended features for the wiki include : semantic search capability, validation of data based on  the underlying ontology, ability to edit the existing ontology, contextual adaptation of  presentation of the content, reasoning based on the underlying knowledge base. It can be applied to various usage scenarios that handle different request types which are part of various processes such as incident management, capability management etc. Thus, will the help of the underlying ontology, the wiki could aid in effective and reliable decision making and provide expert judgment.

Location Awareness Information Representation (LAIR) : LAIR is an ontology that models the geographical relationships between spaces and the functional purpose of a given space. Stata Walking Guide is an application - built using LAIR - that generates walking directions that are similar to those a person would give.

Visualizing Sensor Data : Application that tracks sensors and maps their location in 3D in real time.

Jan. 25th: Bill Johns, Chief Technology Officer, InsightETE

Founded in 2000, InsightETE provides a software solution that captures real-time transactions from the business-user to proactively measure availability and performance. A graphical representation of this information is presented and highlights how it impacts the user’s ability to do business. In addition to providing quantifiable business benefits, this solution:

·        Enables rapid problem-solving by identifying the cause and nature of application outages and performance degradation.

·        Facilitates more effective communications between the Business and IT

·        Eliminates "Service-Level disagreements"

Bill will talk about InsightETE technology and challenges to be researched.

Feb. 1st: Paresh Soni, IBM, Jeff Reagan, Sypherlink

Business Intelligence - Scope and Challenges

·        Introduction to Business Intelligence, Brief Analysis of the Marketplace, Discussion on BI vendors.

·        Introduction to Business Modeling and Data Modeling as the core foundation of BI solutions.

·        Introduction to Data Warehousing

·        Introduction to Reporting - various flavors or reporting and effective report management.

·        Introduction to Analytics - (includes OLAP) and their fit in the BI environment.

·        Introduction to Project Management of BI Projects

·        Best Practices in Business Intelligence

·        BI Challenge Problems

·        Summary and Recap

·        Q & A

Feb. 8th: Prof. David Landsbergen, John Glenn Institute for Public Affairs

Public Policy in Enabling Technical Standards for Sustainability

Ohio HB 251 calls for Ohio’s public universities to lower their carbon footprint.  The Ohio Board of Regents will soon begin developing a set of metrics and an information system to collect information from across the various universities to measure their progress.  While the process has not formally started, our preliminary investigation indicates that the focus will be on collecting information about outputs; e.g., KWH dollars avoided.  Obviously, collecting just this information would not allow anyone to know which university is doing well and why, since the choice of control variables is also important (e.g., technologies now employed and planned, age of buildings, and patterns of use).  Even more important, but far removed from the discussion so far, are any plans for collecting information on attitudes, behaviors, and managerial practices since human behavior is just as important as developing new technologies in reducing our society's carbon footprint.  Indeed, it could be argued that successfully developing the “hard technologies” is dependent on understanding the human and social context in which they will be deployed.  Short term, the proposed research is to develop a proof of concept for an enterprise model that would support Ohio State’s and the Ohio Board of Regent’s efforts to manage the reduction of greenhouse gases.  The research will draw upon, and integrate, several research areas: information economics, computer science, informatics, public policy, and simulation.  Long term, the goal is to develop sufficient empirical data on the utility and promise of this enterprise model in order to apply for larger, external interdisciplinary research grants.

Feb. 15th: Randall Glassgow, Cardinal Health

SAP NetWeaver Technology Platform and Composition Environment Overview

SAP is best known as a packaged application vendor of a suite of business applications built around proprietary technology. With the continued impact and adoption of service oriented architecture (SOA) in the marketplace SAP has developed an open technology platform, service composition toolset, and strategy for the adoption of an enterprise approach to service enabling.

SAP NetWeaver is the technology platform that provides both design and runtime services for all applications provided by SAP as well as their customers and partners.  In addition, it provides a framework and roadmap for the adoption of an evolutionary approach to SOA.  SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment provides a methodology and an Eclipse-based toolset to develop, manage, and deploy composite applications that follow SAP's enterprise SOA principle.  It combines infrastructure components such as a Java EE 5 Application Server, UI modeling framework, guided procedures for collaborative process modeling, and a registry for service and business object definition.

The SAP EAF is an extension of the TOGAF Enterprise Architecture Framework specifically designed to support the effective adoption of packaged solutions in the Service-Oriented Enterprise.

The objective is to provide an overview of the features and functions of the SAP Netweaver Platform, the toolset that makes up the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment for building composite applications, and discuss the SAP approach for SOA adoption and the role that the SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework plays in realizing the architecture.

Potential research:

• Comparison of ACE techniques with SAP EAF

Feb. 22nd: Dr. Joseph Fiksel - Center for Resilience, The Ohio State University

With support from the USEPA, state and local governments, and private industry, OSU has been developing an Industrial Ecosystem toolkit to support the practice of byproduct synergy – converting wastes into profits. The centerpiece of the toolkit is an application called Eco-Flow that enables real-time construction and optimization of material flow networks.  Continuing research involves extending the capabilities of Eco-Flow and coupling it with other applications that evaluate waste conversion opportunities and the corresponding environmental benefits.

Feb. 29th: Introduction to the .Net Foundation 3.5 and its application to Resource Seeking Mobile workflows, Prof. Furrukh Khan, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University

In this talk Prof. Khan will first give an introduction to the new technologies in .Net Framework 3.5; specifically WCF (Windows Communication Foundation), WF (Windows Workflow foundation), WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and CardSpace (Microsoft’s’ Federated Identity solution). After this introduction Prof. Khan will describe his research work that is based on the above mentioned technologies. Specifically Prof. Khan will talk about his research on “Resource Seeking Mobile Workflows”. These workflows flow to various machines where specific resources are available (memory, cpu, data, services) for a successful completion of the workflow. The architecture of the infrastructure that enables mobility in workflows will be presented.

Mar. 7^th: CETI Project Reports

Mar. 14^th: CETI Project Reports