Business and IT Alignment using a Model-Based Plug-in Framework

Today we're witnessing the necessity to align Business and Information Technology (IT) and a respective change in the role that IT plays for businesses. Specifically, IT is massively changing from its role as an enabler - businesses request the IT support to an industrial sector in its own right. This sector provides IT infrastructure and services to any business in a way similar to the way electricity is provided via sockets to any device that can be plugged in. Based on the assumption that businesses in different sectors of the economy will require IT for different reasons and in different ways, this proposal aspires to develop an IT socket that will realize the vision of businesses plugging-in to IT.The reasons for the aforementioned transformation are manifold: legal aspects, regulations, business requirements, economic factors etc. Technological trends such as SOA, Software as a Service, and Virtualisation are influencing the way in which IT services are rendered. Model-based approaches and IT-Governance are prominent candidates to bridge evolving business contexts and IT, in order to adapt the provisioning of IT for business needs. This challenge can be met by capitalizing on semantic technologies for IT-Governance.The proposed project will develop concepts, tools and methods that will: (1) simplify modelling efforts by providing the Next Generation Modelling Framework, (2) provide IT-Socket compliance checks and reporting mechanisms for computer centres, and (3) provide orchestration and governance tools (semantic workflows, agents) by integrating semantics into legacy applications. These outcomes rely on research advances in (a) graphical models and tools for their transformation into machine interpretable ontologies, (b) integration of different modelling languages, (c) reference ontologies and ontologies supporting model transformation, (d) rule systems for automatic generation, transformation, mapping, evolution of models and ontologies.