Towards an Open Collaboration Service Framework Liu, Sandy; Spencer, Bruce; Du, Weichang; Chi, Chihung
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NRC Publications Archive Archives des publications du CNRC Towards an open collaboration service framework Liu, Sandy; Spencer, Bruce; Du, Weichang; Chi, Chihung This publication could be one of several versions: author’s original, accepted manuscript or the publisher’s version. / La version de cette publication peut être l’une des suivantes : la version prépublication de l’auteur, la version acceptée du manuscrit ou la version de l’éditeur. For the publisher’s version, please access the DOI link below./ Pour consulter la version de l’éditeur, utilisez le lien DOI ci-dessous. Publisher’s version / Version de l'éditeur: https://doi.org/10.1109/CTS.2011.5928668 2011 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), pp. 77-85, 2011-06-01 NRC Publications Record / Notice d'Archives des publications de CNRC: https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/view/object/?id=d3ac87ef-c3aa-4dd7-be83-af00e5338270 https://publications-cnrc.canada.ca/fra/voir/objet/?id=d3ac87ef-c3aa-4dd7-be83-af00e5338270 Access and use of this website and the material on it are subject to the Terms and Conditions set forth at https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/copyright READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEBSITE. L’accès à ce site Web et l’utilisation de son contenu sont assujettis aux conditions présentées dans le site https://publications-cnrc.canada.ca/fra/droits LISEZ CES CONDITIONS ATTENTIVEMENT AVANT D’UTILISER CE SITE WEB. Questions? Contact the NRC Publications Archive team at [email protected]. If you wish to email the authors directly, please see the first page of the publication for their contact information. Vous avez des questions? Nous pouvons vous aider. Pour communiquer directement avec un auteur, consultez la première page de la revue dans laquelle son article a été publié afin de trouver ses coordonnées. Si vous n’arrivez pas à les repérer, communiquez avec nous à [email protected]. Towards an Open Collaboration Service Framework Sandy Liu, Bruce Spencer Weichang Du Chihung Chi National Research Council University of Tsinghua University & University of New Brunswick New Brunswick Beijing, China Fredericton, Canada Fredericton, Canada & University of New Brunswick {firstname.lastname}@nrc.gc.ca [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT and resources [4]. Forming a VO is considered to be a means to help address critical resource, personnel and This paper introduces an open collaboration framework logistical issues. There is typically a 30% to 50% increase called SAVOIR, which supports collaboration for in productivity as result of implementing VOs [5]. distributed groups to work together with open sets of Successful collaboration does not just happen; most of the heterogeneous resources. This framework is built on the collaborative work requires much coordination effort from concept of service computing and cloud computing with start to end. focus on the openness and accessibility. The set of resources managed in this framework is open; it includes As many systems are built independently in silos, data are infrastructure services, platform services, and software scattered, and people are located in different places. It is services. SAVOIR aims to deliver Collaboration as a difficult to collaborate effectively under such a situation, Service (CaaS). It introduces a generic approach to where the collaborators and resources are distributed and registering and interacting with distributed resources; it may not have been designed to work together. The also illustrates a general mechanism in defining and required coordination effort behind the scenes can span coordinating resources and people into effective from human-to-human, human-to-device, device-to-data, collaboration sessions. application-to-application, application-to-device, device- to-platform, platform-to-network, and organization-to- organization - let alone other human factors concerns. In KEYWORDS: Open collabortion, Coordination of general there is a lack of well-defined collaboration Collaboration as a Services, SOA, serivce interoperability. models and service models that can support the emerging collaboration practices. This paper outlines an open collaboration framework, where we introduce the concept 1. INTRODUCTION of Collaboration as a Service (CaaS), specifically identifies what kind of services are required and provides a Collaboration can be found in almost every context in life mechanism to allow these heterogeneous services to work today. The prevalence of the Internet, the growing effectively under the notion of cloud computing. availability and the decreased cost of bandwidth and computational power have made collaborative work 2. GENERAL COLLABORATION dramatically easier, and opened up many new ways to DEFINITION collaborate. Built on concept of Software as a Service (SaaS)[1], Platform as a Service (PaaS)[2], and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)[3], the emerging concept 2.1 Concept of Collaboration of cloud computing is breaking another new ground for Since collaboration is so prevalent in human society, it is collaboration. These services and the ultimate receiving an increasing amount of attention from a wide connectiveness allow people to share ideas, knowledge, range of disciplines. Domain specific silos often impede and skills widely and nearly instantaneously. the capacity to discover and synthesis research results, which makes it particularly challenging to develop a cross- Nowadays many people are working with remote disciplinary theoretical framework for collaboration that collaborators under the notion of Virtual Organization goes beyond a dictionary definition in order to use (VO) - the flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing collaboration as a problem solving strategy in diverse among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions, contexts [6]. Collaboration is defined as the action of working with someone to produce something or something produced in collaboration with someone [7]. Thus, it can refer to the requirement for all collaborative activities. It is to be considered that over time, with the aggregated results from collaboration behavior, the collaborating process, the result of collaboration, and so on. The dictionary definition gives all of these sessions, the collaboration goals can be fulfilled. little distinction between collaboration, cooperation, and coordination. Elliott has proposed a generalized framework To help understand what needs to be coordinated, we marked by the distinction between coordination, define the key interacting components of collaboration in cooperation, and collaboration, with each activity being the following section. With these key components, we can dependent upon the previous, while addressing increased better analyze what qualifies as collaboration and what are levels of complexity [8]. In this paper we consider the defining principles or elements of this process. collaboration more precisely as the process where two or more collaborators work jointly in coordinated activities 2.2 Components of Collaboration toward a set of shared goals. Furthermore, we consider the In this paper, we defined seven basic components for collaboration process (P) consists of one or more collaboration, listed as follows: collaborative sessions (CSs) where each session involves 1) Collaboration Outcome (O) one or more collaborators conducting activities The Collaboration Outcome includes the end product collaboratively: and everything created in the process of the n collaboration. It can be tangible or intangible such as P = !CSi a report being developed, mutual understanding, i=1 consensus on certain issues, meeting minutes, design documents etc. Fig.1 below illustrates an example set of collaboration sessions in a specific collaboration; each happy face denotes a collaborator. These sessions can be held synchronously or asynchronously depending on the needs 2) Collaboration Goals (G) and availability of the collaborators and resources. Multiple The Collaboration Goals are the common goals that sessions can be held at the same time, e.g. CS1 and CS4, or are all the collaborators are aiming to achieve. These with overlapping periods, e.g. CS5 overlaps with CS2, CS3, goals may not be clearly identified in the beginning, and CS . The same collaborator can participate in multiple 6 but one of the collaboration goals could be to develop sessions, as shown in CS and CS , where two 2 5 the shared understanding and identify emergent goals. collaborators are in both of the sessions. However, these sessions are coordinated, and the aim of these sessions is to 3) Collaborators (U) work on tasks or activities contributing towards the shared The Collaborators are the team members who goal(s); coordination is a fundamental enabling participate in the collaboration activities. At least two collaborators are required in order to collaborate. 4) Resources (R) Towards Collaboration Goals The resources are anything that supports the collaboration and can be accessed by the collaboration team. A resource may not be globally available for everyone. The resources include data, information, software, hardware, tools, services, networks, and CS6 Shared Goals platforms provided by other person(s) or objects. Note that the collaboration outcome of one collaboration session can become resource for another session. Two people can potentially collaborate face-to-face without CS4 CS5 involving any resource and in