Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
in-cloud services and platforms. These innovations underpin capabilities offered
in Virtual Organization Management and other categories.
•
Software License Management
capabilities are essential for enabling the adop-
tion of Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) and other emerging business models, and had so
far been lacking in the majority of SOI technologies including Grid and Cloud
computing.
• Innovations to improve the management of
Service Level Agreements
cover the
whole range from improvements to open standard schemes for specifying agree-
ments, to ensuring fine-grained monitoring of usage, performance and resource
utilization.
•
Data Management
capabilities enable better storage, access, translation and
integration of data. Innovations include capabilities for aggregating heteroge-
neous data sources in virtual data-stores and ensuring seamless access to hetero-
geneous geographically distributed data sources.
• Innovations in
Grid Portals
enable scalable solutions based on emerging Web2.0
technologies that provide an intuitive and generic instrumentation layer for
managing user communities, complex processes and data in SOI.
In the remainder of this chapter, we provide an overview of the innovative technical
capabilities identified and solutions produced, of the research challenges that were
addressed, the commercial drivers that motivated the development of these solu-
tions, and their anticipated business impact (i.e. their “innovation dividend”) based
on the experience generated by the Business Experiments where these results have
been validated.
8.2 Life-cycle management of virtual organizations
The following are often identified as the most significant recurring issues during the
B2B collaboration life-cycle (Gridipedia 2009a):
1. The identification and selection of business partners (based on their reputation
and the suitability of services that they offer) among an available pool of service
providers or consumers.
2. The creation and management of a Circle-of-Trust among the selected partners.
The “VO Set-up” common capability offers a standards-based foundation for busi-
ness solutions to these problems. This capability facilitates the identification and
selection of business partners engaging in B2B collaborations, the creation of a
distinct context for each of these collaborations, the creation and lifecycle manage-
ment of a distinct Circle-of-Trust amongst the business partners involved in each
collaboration, and the binding of each collaboration context with the corresponding
Circle-of-Trust.
It is useful in typical B2B collaborative scenarios where participants (corpo-
rate users, services or resources) have to be identified and trust has to be estab-
lished between them. A demand for including new participants can appear during
the collaboration lifetime, and existing participants may be dropped. The security of
