Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

Business – IT Alignment

Seraphin Calo

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

How far do you think we are from complete Business-IT alignment and what is your vision of BDIM

Complete Business-IT alignment– Businesses rely on IT support (one of the largest US financial institutions has an IT budget of

over $3 B )– Is it optimal (no), automated (barely), autonomic (no), …

Visions of BDIM– ITSM – IT Service Management

• “… management solutions that increase automation and reduce complexity … based on ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) processes …”

– SBVR – Semantics of Business Vocabularies and Rules• “… defines the vocabulary and rules for documenting the semantics of business vocabulary,

business facts, and business rules…”– OCR – Open Collaborative Research

• “… create an integrated privacy and security policy management framework that encompasses end-to-end solutions for use across heterogeneous configurations covering all data …”

Related Standards Activity– OMG BPDM (Business Process Definition Metamodel), SBVR– IETF/DMTF CIM Policy Model, CIM-SPL– SNIA Storage Profile for CIM– OASIS BPEL, DIPAL, XACML for access control– W3C P3P for Privacy, WS-Policy for Web Services Assertions– GGF WS-Agreement

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

Tools and Methodware

IBM RationalUnified Process

Component Infrastructure Roadmap

IBM Tivoli Unified Process

IBM IT Management Reference Model - Making ITIL Actionable

Comprehensive Approach to IT Service Management

Business Reference Model

Implementation Reference Model for IT

Process Reference Model for IT

IT Process Reference Model

Operational Workflow

Workflow Procedures

High Level Processes

Component Business Models

CBM for IT

CBM for Financial

CBM for Government

CBM for Automotive

…etc.

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

OMG Modeling Layers

Platform Independent Model (PIM)

Platform Specific Model (PSM)

Business model

Technology independent

model

Technology specific model

Map

pin

gM

app

ing

Business Model(CIM or Computation Independent Model) e.g. business processes, organization

structure, business metrics – expressed without implementation details

e.g. BOM, BOM2

e.g. BPEL flows

e.g. models tied to J2EE, .Net

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

1.Policy

Specifications

2.Abstract

Policies

3.Concrete

Policies(Cross-cutting

Interaction Models)

4.Implement-

ations

and Config-

urations

Policy Ratification Toolkit and Conflict

Resolution Strategies

Semantic Backplane for interaction with other components

Transformations

SPARCLE Policy Audit and Compliance

Utility

Policy Framework with Research Areas Highlighted

SPARCLE Natural Language Policy Creation Utility

System Specific Implementation

Instantiated byNatural LanguageSubclasses and

other UIs

Natural Language Specification

Instantiated byPrivacy / Security

Ontologies

Models

Instantiated by State Machines, Event

Corr. Modules, etc.

System-specific Configurations

Instantiated bySpecial-purpose

Modeling Notations

Cross-cutting Mappings

Policy Framework Backbone Proposed Research AreasImplementation Components

Future Implementation Component

Active Research on Component

Initial Research on Component

Key

Policy Synchronization

Utilities

Policy Synchronization

Utilities

Policy Verification Utilities

Audit and Compliance Utilities

Policy Verification Utilities

Non-technical users interact at this level

Policy Ratification that requires formal semantics Is performed at this level

Models (or templates) define the practical (i.e. informal) relationships

between various policy, resource, and security

semantics

Comments on Policy Layers

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

What do you think are the reasons we have not been able to realize the goal

Understanding of complex systems– The difficulty in capturing and maintaining semantic relationships has been

underestimated

– Human factors considerations were more difficult than expected

– Planning and decision support are difficult to automate

Modeling of complex systems– Lack of widely accepted standards

• At least 15 separate languages for Privacy• Multiple Policy languages for different domains, each with separate and markedly

different definitions of “policy”

Mapping from Business level requirements to IT Configuration– Ambiguities

– Alternative implementations

– Optimization problems not well formed

Moving target– Business models

– Laws and Regulations

– Resource models

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

What in your perspective is the current state of the art

IT Operations remain predominantly manual

– Various tools for administrator / operator support

– Automation only for relatively simple processes

Business process transformation

– Vision of how business needs to operate

Infrastructure being developed

– Model driven development

– Business process structuring• BPDM, BOM, BPEL, …

– Simplification techniques evolving• Virtualization• Discovery• Policy-based management• Autonomics

Some pieces coming together in research and pilot projects

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

Which challenges remain

Resource Modeling– Virtualization

Automated Provisioning– Distributed components– Dependencies– KPIs / KSIs

Automated Monitoring – Instrumentation– Data collection and aggregation– Enforcement of SLAs– Problem resolution and root cause analysis

Business Process Modeling– Semantics of business activities– Mapping to semantics of IT processes

Putting it all together– Top to bottom, end to end integration

Research Division

© 2006 IBM Corporation

What are some of the interesting ideas/work to undertake/happening in this area

Virtualization of resources

Dependency analysis

Impact analysis

Constrained natural language parsing for goals and policies

Explanation of system behavior

Policy analysis and refinement

Auditing and Compliance