DISSERTATION Reference Architecture for Virtual Organization Verfasserin Wajeeha Khalil angestrebter akademischer Grad Doktorin der Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften (Dr.rer.soc.oec.) Wien, 2012 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 084 881 Dissertationsgebiet lt. Studienblatt: Informatik Betreuerin / Betreuer: Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Erich Schikuta To my Parents... Abstract \United we stand, divided we fall" is a well known saying. We are living in the era of virtual collaborations. Resources are logical and solutions are virtual. Advancement on conceptual and technological level has enhanced the way people communicate. Everything-as-a-Service once a dream, now becoming a reality. Problem nature has also been changed over the time. Today, e-Collaborations are applied to all the domains possible. Medical, engineering, meteorology, biology, chemistry, physics, earthquake and weather forecast, social networks and so on, all are using electronic platforms. Extensive data and computing resources are in need and assistance from human experts is also becoming essential. This puts a great responsibility on Information Technology (IT) researchers and developers to provide generic platforms where user can easily communicate and solve their problems. To realize this concept, distributed computing has offered many paradigms, e.g. clus- ter, grid, cloud computing. Virtual Organization (VO) is a logical orchestration of globally dispersed resources to achieve common goals. Existing paradigms and technology is used to form Virtual Organization, but lack of standards remained a critical issue for last two decades. Our research endeavor focuses on developing a standard for Virtual Organization building process. The proposed standardization process is a two phase activity. First phase provides re- quirement analysis and the second phase presents a Reference Architecture for Vir- tual Organization (RAVO). This form of standardization is chosen to accommodate both technological and paradigm shift. We categorize our efforts in two parts. First part consists of a pattern to identify the requirements and components of a Virtual Organization [1]. Second part details a generic framework based on the concept of Everything-as-a-Service. Stakeholders are an important entity in any collaborative environment [2][3]. We developed a pattern for stakeholders and presented new relationship between user and resources in form of Subject [1][4]. Finally, these concepts are materialized as a concrete framework in the domain of E-learning and Computational Intelligence. Stakeholders and Subject relationship are also verified in the domain of informal Virtual Organizations (e.g. Social Net- works) [5]. For evaluation purpose an instance based on RAVO, named N2SKY [6] is developed by a master student at the University of Vienna. iii Zusammenfassung \United we stand, divided we fall" ist eine bekannte Englische Redewendung. Wir leben in der Zeit der virtuellen Zusammenarbeit. Quellen sind logisch und L¨osungen virtuell. Fortschritte auf der konzeptionellen und technologischen Ebene verbessern die Weise der menschlichen Kommunikation. Everything-as-a-Service war einmal nur ein Traum. Heute wird es Realit¨at. Auch die Art der zu bew¨altigendenProbleme hat sich im Laufe der Zeit ver¨andert. Heutzutage wird die Online-Kollaboration ¨uber das Internet (e-Collaboration) in allen m¨oglichen wissenschaftlichen Gebieten angewendet. Medizin, Technik, Mete- orologie, Biologie, Chemie, Physik, Erdbeben und Wettervorhersage, Soziale Net- zwerke usw., alle benutzen elektronische Plattformen. Umfangreiche Daten und Rechenressourcen sind n¨otigund auch die Assistenz durch menschlichee Experten wird immer bedeutsamer. Diese Situation stellt eine grosse Verantwortung f¨urIT Forscher und Entwickler dar, generische Plattformen zu schaffen, auf denen Benutzer einfach kommunizieren und Probleme gemeinsam l¨osenk¨onnen. Das Verteiltes Rechnen (Distributed Computing) bietet viele technische Paradigmen an, wie zum Beispiel Cluster Computing, Grid Computing, Cloud Computing, um dieses Konzept umzusetzen. Konzeptuell erlauben Virtuelle Organisationen (Virtual Organization) ein harmonisches Zusammenspiel von global verbreiteten Ressourcen, um gemein- sam Ziele zu erreichen. Bestehende Paradigmen und Technologie werden heute in der Praxis zum Auf- bau von Virtuellen Organisationen verwendet. Der Mangel an existierenden und anerkannten Standards dazu stellt jedoch ein kritischer Punkt f¨urdie letzten zwei Dekaden dar. Unsere Forschungsbem¨uhung konzentriert sich daher auf die Entwick- lung eines Standards zum Entwurf und zur Realisierung Virtueller Organisationen. Der vorgelegte Standardisierungsansatz besteht aus zwei Phasen. Die erste Phase f¨uhrteine Anforderungsanalyse durch und die zweite Phase stellt eine Referenzar- chitektur (Reference Architecture) f¨urVirtuelle Organisationen (RAVO) vor. Dieser Standardisierungsansatz wurde gew¨ahltum sowohl technologische als auch paradig- matische Wechsel zu erlauben. Wir teilen unsere Bem¨uhungen in zwei Bereiche. Zuerst pr¨asentieren wir einen Modellierungsansatz, um die Anforderungen und Kom- ponenten der Virtuellen Organisation [1] zu identifiziert. Danach definieren wir einen generischen Rahmen, der auf dem Everything-as-a-Service Konzept aufbaut. Stake- holders sind ein wichtiges Element in jeder kooperationsunterst¨utzenden Umgebung [2][3]. Daher haben wir ein neuartiges Schema f¨urStakeholders entwickelt, die es erlaubt Beziehung zwischen Benutzer und Ressourcen in Form von Subjekten [1][4] abzubilden. Zum Schluss werden diese Konzepte in Form konkreter Umsetzungen auf dem v Gebiet des E-Learning und der Computational Intelligence untersucht. Die neuen Elemente der Stakeholders und Subjekt-Beziehungen wurden weiters in informelle Virtuelle Organisationen, sogenannten Sozialen Netzwerken, verifiziert [5]. Zur Eval- uation des vorgestellten Ansatzes wurde schliesslich eine praktische Umsetzung, die auf RAVO basiert, unter dem Namen N2Sky als Masterarbeit an der Universit¨at Wien durchgef¨uhrt. Ackowledgements In the name of ALLAH (Subhana hu Taala), Who blessed me with all what I am able to achieve in this world. I am thankful to ALLAH (Subhana hu Taala). I am thankful for my parents and siblings who were a constant source of encouragement during my whole life and specially my course of studies in Vienna. I owe a special thanks to my advisor Prof. Erich Schikuta, who inspired me both as a human and as a supervisor. His analytical and critical skills polished my research abilities and made me achieve this target. He was always there for me during my bad health patches and never lost faith in me which requires allot of patience. My research fellows from Austria namely Helmut Wanek, J¨urgenMangler, Peter Paul Beran, Sonja Kabicher, were a great help during my research. J¨urgenMangler's critical analysis proved helpful during my research paper and dissertation writing. I am thankful to Erwin Mann for his collaboration and support during Evaluation of RAVO. My research fellows from Pakistan Irfan-ul-Haq and Altaf Ahmed Huqqani were a great source of help during course work. I am thankful to my friends Zahida Parveen and Mariam Anees for keeping me motivated during my thesis writing and stay in Vienna. I am thankful to Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) for providing me the opportunity to learn and experience the research environment abroad by funding my Ph.D studies in Vienna. I am thankful to my colleague M. Asfandeyar for providing me discussion time and helping me in proof reading of my dissertation. I also cordially acknowledge my research mentor, Umar Farooq for supporting me during my studies and life. Wajeeha Khalil Vienna, Austria February 2012 Remarks I use \we" and \our" in my thesis as a gesture of respect to the research community. This convention is part of my attitude towards that community. She is used to refer the user without any gender discrimination. VO is used instead of Virtual Organization in whole document. Abbreviations commonly used are listed. vii Contents Abstract ..................................... iii Zusammenfassung................................ v Acknowledgements................................ vii List of Abbreviations ..............................xvii 1 Introduction and Motivation 1 1.1 Use Case................................... 4 1.2 Scenario................................... 5 1.2.1 Building Virtual Organization for Computational Intelligence.. 5 1.2.2 Identification of Stakeholder According to Current Needs in E- learning................................ 5 1.3 Outcomes .................................. 6 1.4 Goals..................................... 6 1.5 Organization of the Thesis......................... 6 2 State of the Art 9 2.1 Virtual Organization............................ 9 2.1.1 Definition............................... 9 2.1.2 Building Blocks............................ 10 2.1.3 Organizational Dimensions of Virtual Organization . 12 2.1.4 Types ................................. 20 2.1.5 Virtual Organization Topology ................... 21 2.1.6 Examples ............................... 22 2.2 Reference Architecture (RA)........................ 22 2.2.1 Architecture.............................. 22 2.2.2 RA Definition............................. 23 2.2.3 Criteria for a Good RA ....................... 23 2.3 Service Oriented Architecture ....................... 24 2.4 Computing Paradigms ........................... 25 2.5 Cloud Computing.............................. 25 2.5.1 Types