D.A1a Framework Architecture
This document describes the ad-hoc architecture for an SLA management framework which has been created within the first year of the European research project SLA@SOI. It serves as formal deliverable D.A1a for reporting the work progress of work package A1 at project month 12. It is complemented by the deliverable D.A1b which provides the actual implementation of the SLA framework.
The motivating vision is the vision of a business-ready service-oriented infrastructure empowering the service economy in a flexible and dependable way. Three key characteristics of this infrastructure, namely predictability and dependability, transparent SLA management and service lifecycle automation, shall support the dynamic provisioning of service as tradable goods. The related technical vision is to use the paradigm of SLAs for managing a complete business/IT stack in correlation with top-level SLAs which are agreed at business level. SLAs will be associated with multiple elements of the stack at multiple layers and will be correlated with each other.
The architecture definition methodology follows the well established industry standard TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework). It is based on a solid foundation in terms of terminology, a general lifecycle model for services and SLAs and the fundamental challenges for an SLA management framework architecture. Based on the common foundations, a conceptual architecture is
presented along a view-based approach including a data view, a functional view, a deployment view, a modelling view, and a scenario view. Furthermore, the conceptual architecture is translated into a technical architecture describing how the technical framework is decomposed into modules, the main module interfaces, and the scenario flows along them. Finally, the technical architecture is
complemented by an integration architecture which explains the tools, techniques and methods adopted for the actual development and integration of the framework.
The technical architecture has been successfully implemented into an SLA management software framework. Details about the technical/scientific evaluation of the SLA framework can be found in deliverable D.B1a. Furthermore, the software framework has been successfully applied against the open reference case within an ad-hoc demonstrator. More details on this can be found in deliverable D.B2a.
Elements of the architecture sketched in this document have been successfully published at two conferences. [1] provides a general introduction to the challenges and requirements for an SLA management framework and details the conceptual architecture. [2] discusses the need for proper SLA management within the context of the Future Internet – here SLAs can serve as key enabler to
support management and governance across different perspectives and domains.
