D6.8 - Assessment Studies on the communication paradigms...

IP CASCADAS “Component-ware for Autonomic, Situation-aware Communications, And Dynamically Adaptable Services”

D6.8

Bringing Autonomic Services to Life

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D6.8 - Assessment Studies on the communication paradigms developed within CASCADAS

Status and Version: Final Version after 3rd review

Date of issue: 19th December, 2008

Distribution: Public

Author(s): Name Partner

Antonio Manzalini

Corrado Moiso

Telecom Italia

Paola Fantini

Claudio Palasciano

MIP

Checked by: Mario Giacometto Telecom Italia

Abstract This document represents the Deliverable D6.8. Contents include main results of assessment studies of Cascadas communication paradigms and technological approach. Specifically:

• Section 2 introduces a summary of major drivers for Future Internet/Web and ICT-Telecommunications services; these drivers have inspired the Cascadas vision.

• Section 3 elaborates on the project vision about the convergence of Future Internet/Web and Telecommunications-ICT. Moreover, two service/application scenarios (Personal Behavioural Advertisement and Autonomic Mobile Social Networking) are briefly described; the former has been selected by the project for experimental validations of the tool-kit and for the assessment studies (made in terms of a questionnaire filled by Cascadas Partners and some external Stakeholders)

• Section 4 describes the adopted assessment methodology;

• Section 5 reports and discusses the results of the assessment;

• Appendixes report the questionnaire and some statistics on the population that was targeted (according to 3rd ESR comments) and some views on assessment results.

Assessment results reflect a general positive judgment of Cascadas architecture and technological approach, highlighting points of strength in comparison with the current Internet and Telco Service Frameworks. Nevertheless indicators Q2, Q3, Q9, and Q14 (creation/composition, application integration, multi-domain DSF, and CAPEX savings) have got some remarks of weakness: further investigations should be focused to try improving these areas.


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Table of Content 1 Introduction 3

1.1 References 3 1.2 Document History 6

2 Drivers Future Internet/Web and ICT-Telecommunications 8 2.1 Internet today 9

2.1.1 Internet penetration 9 2.1.2 Internet Usage 11 2.1.3 Economics of the internet 13 2.1.4 Internet situation in Europe today 16

2.2 Telecommunications-ICT Service Frameworks today 16 2.2.1 Telecommunication Services adoption and evolution 18

3 Future Internet/Web and Telecommunications-ICT Convergence 21 3.1 Personal Behavioural Advertisement 22 3.2 Autonomic Mobile Social Networking 23

4 Assessment 25 4.1 Introduction 25 4.2 Assessment Methodology 27

4.2.1 Theoretical assessment approaches 28 4.2.2 Selection of an appropriate evaluation method 30 4.2.3 Identification of measurable indicators 31 4.2.4 Assessment Procedure 36

5 Assessment results 37 6 Conclusions 40 7 Appendix 1: Assessment questionnaire 41

7.1 Notes for the compilation 41 7.2 Questionnaire form 41

8 Appendix 2: Statistics on questionnaire answers 46


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1 Introduction

Internet, ICT and Telecommunications are likely to evolve rapidly to cope with Prosumers’ requirements and needs in producing and consuming pervasive, situated-aware (communication and contents) services.

This evolutionary trend will allow a wide range of new activities of Information Society that today are simply not possible or impractical. However, to make this vision real, a deep re-thinking of ways of developing and deploying distributed service and networking eco-systems is required.

In this evolutionary vision, CASCADAS main goal is developing an autonomic component-based tool-kit to enable composition, execution and deployment of innovative services capable of flexing and dynamically self-adapting in unpredictable environments.

Purpose of Deliverable D6.8 is reporting the main results of assessment studies of Cascadas communication paradigms and technological approach. Specifically:

• Section 2 introduces a summary of major drivers for Future Internet/Web and ICT-Telecommunications services; these drivers have inspired the Cascadas vision.

• Section 3 elaborates on the project vision about the convergence of Future Internet/Web and Telecommunications-ICT. Moreover, two service/application scenarios (Personal Behavioural Advertisement and Autonomic Mobile Social Networking) are briefly described; the former has been selected by the project for experimental validations of the tool-kit and for the assessment studies (made in terms of a questionnaire filled by Cascadas Partners and some external Stakeholders)

• Section 4 describes the adopted assessment methodology;

• Section 5 reports and discusses the results of the assessment, and lesson learnt (according to 3rd ESR comments);

• Appendixes report the questionnaire and some statistics on the population that was targeted (according to 3rd ESR comments) and some views on assessment results.

1.1 References - [Alf] Alfano, R., Manzalini, A., Moiso, C. Distributed Service Framework: an

innovative open eco-system for ICT/Telecommunications, in Proc. Autonomics 2007, 28-30 October 2007, Roma, in ACM Digital Library.

- [Manz1] Manzalini, A., P. Marrow, P. “CASCADAS Project: A Vision of

Autonomic Self-organizing Component-ware for ICT Services”, SOAS2006, Erfurt (D), Sept. 2006

- [Manz2] Manzalini, A., Zambonelli, F., “Towards Autonomic and Situation-

Aware Communication Services: the CASCADAS VisionIEEE 2006 Workshop on Distributed Intelligent Systems, Prague (CZ), June 2006.


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- [Manz3] Manzalini, A., "Tomorrow’s Open Internet for Telco and Web federations", CISIS2008, Barcelona, 4th - 7th March, 2008

- [Exp] Expert Group on Services in the Future Internet: Workshop Report

[Bruxelles, November 2008] - [Bas] Basili, V.R., Caldiera, G., Rombach, H.D. “The goal question metric

approach”, 1994 (ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/sel/papers/gqm.pdf). - [Kitch1] Kitchenham, B., “DESMET: A method for evaluating Software

Engineering methods and tools”, Technical Report TR96-09, August 1996. (http://www.osel.co.uk/desmet.pdf ).

- [Kitch2] Kitchenham, B., “Evaluating Software Engineering Methods and

Tool. Part 2: Selecting an appropriate evaluation method – technical criteria”, Software Engineering Notes, 1996, 21(2):11-15.

- [Linst] Linstone, H.A., Turoff, M. “The Delphi method : techniques and

applications”, Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Advanced Book Program, 1975.

- [Row] Rowe and Wright: “The Delphi technique as a forecasting tool: issues

and analysis”. International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 15, Issue 4, October 1999

- [Stanl] Stanley, M., “Technology / Internet Trends” , Web 2.0 Summit - San

Francisco, October 18, 2007. - [CNNIC] http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/ - [PEW INT] http://www.pewinternet.org/ - [IWS] http://www.internetworldstats.com/ - [NNR] http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/ - [EUST]

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=1090,30070682,1090_33076576&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

- [PWC] http://www.pwc.com/ - [IAB] IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, Full-Year Results, May

2008. - [ICC] “Interactive content and convergence: Implications for the information

society”, A Study for the European Commission (DG Information Society and Media) By Screen Digest Ltd, CMS Hasche Sigle, Goldmedia Gmbh, Rightscom Ltd. Final Report 2007.


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- [EUICT] Annual Information Society, Report 2007. A European Information Society for Growth and Employment, COM(2007) 146, SEC(2007) 395 Volumes 1, 2, 3. March 2007. (http://ec.europa.eu/i2010)

- [AISR] Preparing Europe’s digital future i2010 Mid-Term Review Volume 1:

i2010 — Annual Information Society Report 2008 - [EGEP] eGovernment Economics Project (eGEP), Expenditure Study, Final

version, 15 May 2006 - [IDC] Open Source Software Business Models 2007-2011 Forecast: A

Preliminary View. - [MALW] (http://www.itnews.com.au) - [LiBe] Li Charlene, Bernoff Josh, “Groundswell: Winning in a World

Transformed by Social Technologies”, Harward Business Press, 2008 - [OECD] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),

“Malicious Software (Malware): A Security Threat to the Internet Economy”, Ministerial Background Report DSTI/ICCP/REG(2007)5/FINAL

- [Brow] David Lewis, Declan O’Sullivan, John Keeney, Towards the

Knowledge-Driven Benchmarking of Autonomic Communications, Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM'06) © 2006 IEEE

- [IBM] “An architectural blueprint for autonomic computing”.IBM whitepaper

2004


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1.2 Document History

Version Date Authors Comment

0.1 23rd May, 2008 Antonio Manzalini ToC and First draft

0.2 3rd June 2008 Antonio Manzalini Second draft, contributions on section 3 and 4

0.3 15th June 2008 Paola Fantini Contributions on section 2

0.4 7th July 2008 Paola Fantini, Claudio Palasciano Contributions on section 2 and 4

0.5 7th July 2008 Antonio Manzalini Third draft, contribution on section 2 , 3 and 4

0.6 9th July 2008 Nermin Brgulja, Franco Zambonelli, Peter Deussen, Roberto Cascella

Comments on section 4

0.7 24th July 2008 Claudio Palasciano Fabrice Saffre, Antonio di Ferdinando

Contribution on section 4

0.10 24th July 2008 Paola Fantini, Claudio Palasciano Contributions on section 2, 4 and 5

0.11 27th July 2008 Nermin Brgulja, Franco Zambonelli, Peter Deussen, Elisabetta Di Nitto, Richard Tateson, Ricardo Lent, Antonio di Ferdinando, Matthias Baumgarten, and external people

Filled questionnaires (internal 1st round)

0.12 28th July 2008 Elisabetta Dinitto, Roberto Cascella Antonio di Ferdinando

Comments on section 4

0.14 30th July 2008 Ricardo Lent, Richard Tateson, Peter Deussen, Nermin Brgulja, Corrado Moiso, Elisabetta Dinitto, Matthias Baumgarten, Rico Kusber, Mario Giacometto, Borbala Benko, Pietro Michiardi, and external people

Filled questionnaires (internal 2nd round)

0.15 31st July 2008 Paola Fantini, Claudio Palasciano, Cinzia Ferreri

Contribution on section 5, 4 and 6

Final before 3rd Review

1st August 2008 Antonio Manzalini, Corrado Moiso Final Check

30th September 2008 Claudio Palasciano Providing inputs about Cascadas population targeted

23rd-25th November 2008 (ICT2008)

Antonio Manzalini, Corrado Moiso Collecting inputs on the questionnaire from people


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visiting Cascadas booth

pre-final draft after 3rd Review

18th December 2008 Antonio Manzalini, Corrado Moiso Implementing revisions and enhancements to according to 3rd ESR; draft for internal quality check

Final after 3rd Review

19th December 2008 Mario Giacometto, Antonio Manzalini, Corrado Moiso

Implementing comments from internal quality check


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2 Drivers Future Internet/Web and ICT-Telecommunications

The unstructured expansion of Internet is creating the threat that in the near future the Net will become too large, static and not-optimized. Tomorrow’s Internet is expected to overcome current limitations and address emerging trends including: mobility, the diffusion of large numbers of heterogeneous nodes and devices, the mass digitization of media, the emergence of software as services, constraints imposed by resources, the emergence of new models of services and interaction, and the need for improved security and privacy features, etc. On the other hand, Internet today is affected by a series of tussles; for example different Internet Players have strongly divergent interests, which are in competition which each other: risk is that such competition will foster a fragmented innovation only adapting certain mechanisms to achieve certain goals and pushing-back other ones.

In this sense, it’s important to highlight that Internet was created thirty years ago by sharing a consistent and simple vision; at that time all Players had a common purpose: creating an infrastructure to hook all computers together so that applications and services could be invented to run over it. Success of Future Internet design is very much based on a starting from a common and consistent vision for all Players.

Recently, Web 2.0 has been defined as a business embracing the web-as-a-platform and using its strengths to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. As a matter of fact, with the diffusion of Web2.0 sites, Users are gradually transforming in Prosumers, i.e. they are taking an active role in producing and consuming data, information, contents and services within distributed communities.

At the same time, Telco2.0 trend is emerging today: aim is capturing the essence of above Web2.0 principles (architectures for participation) for the evolution of current Service Infrastructure (e.g. through deployment of SDK): goal is to expose services and enablers that bring together numerous applications and types of contents from a variety of sources to enable people to produce and consume composite services. This evolution could endow advanced business models with broad coalitions/federations of Telco and Application Service Providers, for innovative value-chains.

Nevertheless it should be noted that today Service Providers on the Web (e.g. Google) are “performing” much better than traditional Telco Providers, even in view of the Telco2.0 innovation: as a matter of fact by using the Web “as-a-platform” for providing dynamic services (e.g. perpetual beta services even for long tail, etc), deployed on low-costs platforms, with alternative business models (e.g. services often for free and Advertisers pay) they are generating higher profit margins than Telcos.

Given that, it’s clear Telco business sustainability not only requires a simple endorsing Web2.0 innovative participation models, but above all it should be built on more flexible and effective service and networking platforms. This would allow a really dynamic composition and provisioning of customized services (even micro-services in perpetual beta) entering also the so-called “long-tail” (current domain of Web Providers à la Google).

A first important conclusion is that both Telco and Future Internet have in common a win-win goal: developing a decentralized an open distributed framework of services and data, fostering broad federations of Players and do-it-yourself innovative services and knowledge management allowing not only Providers but above all people (individuals, playing the role of “Prosumers”) to be at the center of Information Society [Alf], [Manz1], [Manz2], [Manz3].


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This evolutionary trend will allow a wide range of new activities of Information Society that today are simply not possible or impractical. However, to make this vision real, a deep re-thinking of ways of developing and deploying distributed service and networking eco-systems is required. This is the area of the studies of Cascadas.

Following sections will report some statistics (e.g. penetration and adoption) and techno-economic information about Future Internet and Telecommunications services.

2.1 Internet today This section will report an executive summary about the use of Internet services as today in the world and in particular in Europe.

2.1.1 Internet penetration The following graph shows the different situations of the web in the world; particularly, we can see that the Asia-Pacific area weighs more than one third of the overall internet users, while Europe and North America together represent almost the 50% of the total internet users.

Figure 1 – Internet Users in the World

In recent years the number of Internet users in the world has been continuously increasing, on average by 15-16% each year in 2005-2006-2007 (see figure below on the left). In particular, in 2007, high growth rates are related to Asia / Pacific users (+24%) and Latin Americans (+17%), whereas the EU users number growth has been low (+10%), as shown in the following figure on the right [Stanl].


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Internet penetration (% users/population) has reached approximately 70% of the European population in 2007. This penetration is appreciable with reference to countries such as Japan and Korea, but falls far below Iceland (86,3%) and below US, which reaches 75% of adult population (see figure below on the left) [CNNIC] [PEW INT]. The Internet penetration in EU countries ranges from a minimum of 30% of the population in Bulgaria to a maximum of 87,8% in the Netherlands (see following figure on the right) [IWS].


Figure 4 – Internet penetration

European countries have a wide broadband coverage (99,2%) , compared with US/Canada (81,6%) and Japan/Korea (43,1%), as you can see in the small box in the figure below on the left. Despite the high coverage, with reference again to the figure below, in EU27 the


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EU Broadband penetration rate (January 2008)

7,6% 8,

4% 8,8% 9,1% 9,

8%

13,7

%

13,8

%

14,2

%

14,6

%

15,0

%

16,1

%

16,9

%

17,1

%

17,3

%

17,4

%

18,3

%

21,2

% 23,3

%

23,8

% 25,4

%

25,6

%

25,7

%

31,2

%

34,2

%

34,6

%

35,6

%

19,0

%

20,0

%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

BG PL SK EL RO LT CY HU CZ LV PT MT IT SI IE ES AT EU27 EE FR DE LU BE UK SE NL FI DK

January 07

Source: Commission services. Data for FR, NL, AT, EE and LT refer to October 2007

Broadband lines per region (million) January 2008

99,281,6

43,1

50

100

EU US and Canada Japan andKorea

mean broadband penetration is still 20%, spanning from a minimum of 7,6% in Bulgaria (BG) to maximum of 36% in Denmark (DK). Compared with other world regions (see the following figure on the right) [NNR], the 20% penetration of broadband connections in Europe is still below US, where it achieves 70% of the internet connections, and also below Japan (63%) and China (50%), that account for the majority of users. Aim of the European Community is to move the figure and homogenize the situation considering Europe as a whole country, this way enabling the same service typologies for all the citizens.

Figure 5 – Broadband penetration

In conclusion, the Internet in recent years has been spreading with lower rates in Europe and North America with respect to Asia, Latin America and the rest of the world. Even in comparison to the US/CANADA areas, the EU Internet penetration is still low (70% vs. 75%). Despite broadband coverage in European countries is nearly complete (around 90%), the penetration of broadband falls far below the USA one (20% vs. 70%).

2.1.2 Internet Usage Besides the penetration of the internet, addressed in the section above, it is important to understand its usage. In this regard, a new social phenomenon is now catching up, namely the groundswell: people are starting to use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations, according to Forrester researchers Li and Bernoff [LiBe]. Social networking, or the participative Web, is one of the growth phenomena of the past four years, becoming one of the most popular online applications for Europeans, after email and online search. In 2007, 24% of European citizens participated in online fora, up from 18% in 2006, with even stronger interest among the younger generations. In the future groundswell the consumers will take on more and more active roles, from simple spectators to proactive creators; these roles will lead to new and different business model opportunities. Besides these evolving trends, in US the most reported activities among internet users are still the traditional one related to Web 1.0: reading and sending e-mail (92%), using a search engine to find information (91%), buying products (66%) and accessing media content (55%), as shown in the figure below on the left [PEW INT]. The Web 2.0 paradigm still appears to have a low penetration in the US, as you can see in the following figure on the right [PEW INT]: creating contents for the internet counts only for 19%, using online social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook or Friendster for 16%, creating or


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participating to online blogs or forum for 12%, creating or using an avatar in a virtual world for 6%.

Figure 6 – Web1.0 and Web2.0 activities in US

It is difficult to collect homogeneous data in order to compare the situation in Europe with the one in different areas of the world. Anyway, it can be said that Europeans’ adoption of both Web 1.0 and 2.0 shows a delay with respect to US. In fact, according to the data collected in 2007, in European countries the percentage of internet users that have carried out Web 1.0 activities is still low, in comparison with US: 50% of users send emails with attachment and 57% use search engines; regarding the Web 2.0 activities, for instance, only 10% of EU users have created a web page, as it is shown in the figure on the left [EUST].

Figure 7 – Web activities

Moreover, according to PriceWaterhouseCooper [PWC], even considering data including Middle East & Africa (EMEA), the usage of advanced Web activities of EU users such as blogging and social networking is very low (respectively around 10% and 50% of the total internet users), in comparison to the corresponding frequency of approximately 40% in Asia/Pacific region for blogging and 80% in Latin America for networking (see figures above, in the middle and on the right). Concerning business, European enterprises in recent years have steadily increased the usage of internet (see figure below) [EUST], in particular the Web 1.0 technologies: 90% has access to internet, more that 60% has a Website and uses eBanking. Quick growth usages are shown by the adoption of broadband connections (that reached nearly 75% in 2006 up to around 50% in 2004) and e-Government, with nearly 50% of the enterprises filling out forms electronically in 2006.


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Figure 8 – ICT use in Enterprises

2.1.3 Economics of the internet Given the complexity and the dynamicity of the value chains in the Internet, there is a ‘mare magnum’ of not always mutually consistent information sources regarding the related markets: therefore it is not easy to do a thorough analysis of the corresponding economic flows. Here follow a brief (and surely not comprehensive) summary of the most relevant/promising markets, with particular regards to Internet-enabled services in the European countries, such as online advertisement, digital content, eCommerce).

2.1.3.1 Online advertisement On line advertisement in US has been steadily growing since the end of 2002, approximately 30% per year from 2004 to 2007 (see figure below on the left [IAB]). Total online advertisement revenues in 2007 are 21.2 $ billion, up 26% versus full year 2006 revenues, in the amount of 16.9 $ billion.

In 2007, nearly 80% of the total US Internet advertising revenues(total 21.2 $ billion) is made up of three formats: Search (41%), Display advertising (21%) and Classifieds (16%): this is not surprising, as these formats can easily reach the majority of internet users that still adopt Web 1.0 technologies (see following figure on the right) [IAB].


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Figure 9 – Internet Advertisement

Concerning the internet advertising market in Europe, the total revenues in 2007 have been in the total amount of 11.2 € billion (16.5 $ billion) that is 40% higher than year 2006 (IAB, 2008). According to these trends, Europe shows signs of closing the gap on the US, which grew 26% to a market value of 21.2 $ billion (14.5 € billion) in the same period.

2.1.3.2 Digital content According to the EC Annual Information Society report [EUICT], the digital content market in Europe, with a 1.8 € billion revenues in 2005, is one of the most promising markets: it is forecast to increase up to 400% in five years (8.3 € billion in 2010). The following figure [ICC] shows that each of the digital content sectors will grow at different rates. In 2010, music and games - delivered both online and mobile - will be more than a half of the total digital content market, while the percentage of Video On Demand movies/TV programmes, whereas still growing in absolute value, will not reach the 7-8% of the total digital content market.

Figure 10 – Digital Contents

2.1.3.3 eCommerce In the United States, eCommerce sales (including goods and services) have been increasing during 2005, 2006 and 2007, both in amount and penetration (the percentage of eCommerce sales to total retail sales) [Stanl]. During the above mentioned period, the total value of US eCommerce sales has increased from 25 $ billion to approx 40 $ billion quarterly and the penetration is increased from approx 3% in 2005 to 4 in 2006. Similar data can be found in European countries: the percentage of enterprises’ total turnover from


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eCommerce via Internet is increased from 2.7% (2005) to 4.2% (2007), showing a quicker growth than the United States one [EUST].

Figure 11 – E-Commerce

2.1.3.4 eHealth It is estimated that [EUICT] by 2010 the eHealth expenditure will be 5% of the total EU states’ health budget, meanwhile health spending is rising faster than GDP and is forecast to reach 16% of GDP by 2020 in OECD countries [AISR]. The potential returns from eHealth investments are relevant, as highlighted by a study commissioned by the European Commission, that has examined the total annual costs/benefits of ten eHealth applications from 1995 to 2008 [EUICT] .

2.1.3.5 eGovernment Public sector is boosting investments in ICT and particular in eGovernment services [EUICT]. A sensible estimation of the eGovernment expenses in European countries is an amount over 12 € billion, taking into account that total public administration eGovernment expenditure in 2004 for EU25 is estimated at about € 11.9 billion [EGEP].

2.1.3.6 Other economic impacts Beyond the classical market/sector categories, several new Internet-enabled activities can be found in the Internet ecosystem, such as Open Source software, spam, malware, etc. Given both the novelty and the various level of legality of these phenomenons, it is very difficult to assess the relevant economic impacts.

Open source software (OSS) sales, as per a recent IDC study [IDC], reached a 1,8 $ billion in the world in year 2006, and IDC forecasts that, by 2010, the OSS sales will increase up to 5.8 billion in 2011, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26% from 2006 to 2011.

Malware [MALW] has become such as a relevant phenomenon that it is estimated that 25% of computers in the United States are now infected [OECD]. On the one hand, malware by itself is not a business opportunity or source of revenue, but it enables money and/or identity theft, and therefore it can have indirect economic impacts.


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2.1.4 Internet situation in Europe today We have seen so far that Internet penetration in Europe is quite good, but there is a relevant part of citizens that still need to be connected. Broadband coverage is nearly complete but adoption rate is slow and not homogeneous among the Member States. The EU usage of Web 2.0 technologies is still low, compared to US and other regions in the world. Therefore, it is not surprising if European Internet economic flows are still low, in comparison to US, even if Member States are catching up, for instance in online advertisement.

2.2 Telecommunications-ICT Service Frameworks today Most of the currently adopted service frameworks for ICT Providers and Telco Operator infrastructures are typically realized by “vertical”, i.e., rigidly tiered, architectures. In general, such platforms integrate in a single system the service execution environments, the relevant Telco-ICT features, and some supporting functions (e.g., payment, authentication, profiles). Whether based on standards or on proprietary products, such service environment are typically characterized by: specific servers for service logic execution; specialized mechanisms/protocols to activate services and to configure such activations; specialised repositories handling the data necessary for the execution and management of the services running on it; repositories for storing user preferences and service activation/deactivation rules; specific and/or proprietary protocols for the interaction of services with other services and with the functions, implemented in it. Such vertical service environments exhibit a number of limitations with regard to the characteristics requires by modern scenarios of convergent, prosumers-oriented, and adaptable services. It is quite difficult to integrate/combine functions belonging to different providers/operators without costly replications, due to lack of adoption of open and/or standard interfaces to access them. This introduces, introducing serious constraints and complexities in the possibility and efficiency in the process of creating and deploying new services, in particular in the presence of multiple stakeholders (i.e., the prosumers) wishing to contribute novel services and data. Problems also arise for sharing a function across different platforms, for integrating/coordinating the platform-specific mechanisms for service and user profile handling (leading to a proliferation on inconsistent user profiles [HF05]), load-balancing, and fault-tolerance.

In order to overcome such limitations, which are becoming economically and technically challenging for both ICT and Telco providers, there is an ongoing evolution toward towards “horizontal” approaches based on: (i) the integration among platforms for service delivery which are deployed in the Telco-ICT infrastructure; (ii) sharing of and interoperability among functions, enablers and service capabilities [Min04].


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Figure 12 – Service Framework evolution

Although at present there is not a shared definition of a “horizontal service layer” in literature, some common principles can be identified: logically unique functions; open interfaces and adoption of open protocols and APIs detaching from actual enables; unique identification of customers and uniform access to data; uniform mechanism for the exposure of services and their features; adoption of a common middleware infrastructures for inter-operability (e.g., CORBA, .NET, etc.). Several solutions implementing such principles already exists, although mostly based on proprietary solutions (e.g., IBM SPDE, Microsoft CSF, HP SDP, Alcatel Open Services Platform, Kabira Service Delivery Platform, ORACLE: SDP Business Solutions). It is worth mentioning that several standards are being proposed providing specifications which can be used to deploy a multi-vendor SDP-based solution (even if a common view and a common terminology are still missing). Examples are: OSA/Parlay APIs and Parlay X Web Services, 3GPP GUP and Liberty Alliance Frameworks, JAIN SLEE specification provided by JSP for event-oriented service execution, and OSE, the architectural vision of OMA. Still, these have not yet led to the appearance of open and easily integrable service frameworks.

The most promising trend in this direction is the adoption of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) [Tho05, HuhS05]. Other than the vast amount of both industrial, standardisation, and research work in the area of SOA architectures for the Web, several initiatives also exist aimed at defining Web Services/SOA Framework for specifically conceived for Telecommunication Services, typically relying on existing and newly proposed standards (defined in W3C, OASIS, WS-* initiative). In general, an SOA-based service framework typically includes sets of macro-functions for execution of loosely coupled services, service exposure, and, in the case of Telco-oriented proposals, functions to enable the deployment and the delivery of services based on Telco features (other than basic connectivity, enables for Multimedia, WAP, location services, etc). In addition, it includes infrastructural services such as directories, SOA communication buses, and identity/access management services. Generally, SOA frameworks are made independent of specific protocols, and are (at least logically) decoupled from technology-specific features. This makes SOA frameworks more suitable for enabling integration and convergence than vertical frameworks and other proprietary horizontal frameworks. Still, in these frameworks, service logic is mainly “centralised” with limited distribution of business logic components: components (e.g., exposed as Web Services) are mainly used to access basic functions (e.g., for accessing data or for controlling Telco features) and not to structure the application business logic. Moreover, the configuration and composition of service logic are static with limited dynamic adaptation to the service execution context. Finally, the


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deployment of applications/components on servers is performed according to some off-line and human-driven planning, with limited (or with no at all) possibility for dynamic adaptation to traffic, performance, fault-handling conditions. Therefore, the current characteristics of SOA frameworks inherently limit scalability and the capability of handling large-scale and largely-distributed services and data systems, and also severely limit the possibility of exploiting such frameworks for the dynamic deployment and execution of innovative, prosumer-oriented, and adaptive services. In particular, the need for specifically configuring application logics makes any attempt in that direction technically hard and economically unbearable. The vision of NESSI [NESSI05a, NESSI05b] tries to address some of the above issues by investigating SOA solutions specifically conceived for large distributed systems with many data/service collection points. However, it still lacks a clear vision towards autonomic and self-organizing solutions.

2.2.1 Telecommunication Services adoption and evolution For telecommunications service providers, landscape is changing rapidly. Due to proliferating competition and the larger and larger adoption of the Web, the services and telecom business models now require serious rethinking.

As an example, the following two figures are reporting an estimation of the penetration [source: internal document TILAB] of fixed and mobile service building block in the Italian market.

Figure 13 – Fixed Telecommunication Services adoption (in Italy)


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Figure 14 – Mobile Telecommunication Services adoption (in Italy)

Clearly, given the current expected market evolution, telecom service providers need to offer new types of services in order to play a sustainable game.

Network assets still remain a key differentiator even in today’s competitive marketplace, and can be leveraged to develop a number of different business models that add value over and above the bit pipe-based models.

With appropriate technological enablers, telecom landscape can actually find new opportunity for those service providers poised to take the best of their legacy attributes and reinforce them with state-of-the-art technologies, for example autonomics.

Let’s consider current business models:

[source: http://www.convergedigest.com/bp/bp1.asp?ID=533&ctgy=]

• Utility Providers compete primarily on the basis of the cost and quality of their connectivity services and offer tiered services, typically priced by bandwidth. Common examples of these are wholesale operators or wholesale operations within large services providers. This is a typically commoditized service and profitability is attributed to the cost-efficiency of network operations.

• Creators develop, own and host the content. Content can be Video, Music, Games or Web 2.0 hosted software-as-a-service (SAAS) applications. Application service providers such as SalesForce.com, Google Maps, Yahoo! Mail fall under creator category.

• Distributors own the customers and have the customer service, billing and all fulfillment responsibilities. The role of the Distributor is to deliver content, applications or services to consumers. The content, applications or services may be generated by the Distributor itself, by a third party or jointly, through some collaborative arrangement.

Telecom service providers recognize that the Creator business model is not well suited to their assets, but this does not mean they need to continue to be left out of the content delivery value chain. It is very feasible to imagine a scenario wherein the service provider partners with the content providers to bundle new and emerging Web 2.0 applications with


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unique network performance assurances to deliver a differentiated experience for certain applications—creating value for consumers, content providers and traditional service providers.

However, in order to be able to bundle Content and Web 2.0 applications on their network and service frameworks a technology innovation is required.


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3 Future Internet/Web and Telecommunications-ICT Convergence

The Information Society increasingly depends on cyber-infrastructure for some of its most important functions. However, today’s cyber-infrastructure is brittle and insecure, due in large part to the quality of the underlying software. Moreover, technological progress is fostering mass digitalization and the pervasive use of information and communication services.

In near future, distinction between ICT, Computer Science, Internet-based services and Telecommunications will almost disappear. This driver will pave the way to unlock a new wave of innovation for future services and application scenarios. Openness, broad federations of players and do-it-yourself innovative services and knowledge management will allow people to be the true center of the Information Society.

Already today, technology is offering, at relatively low cost, a wide set of portable digital devices (e.g., cell phones, PDAs, laptops, digital cameras, music players, etc). The use of these digital devices during human (and machine) daily activities (including business) is generating larger and larger data and knowledge clouds posing the problems of facing the complexity arising from the operation in largely distributed, open and non-deterministic environments.

“Prosumption” is emergent trend today. Users may want to participate actively in “service and contents” creation and, in general, in networking evolution. This is meaning that in the near future the distinction between producers and consumers services and contents will disappear. This is creating a new Challenge: there is need of software solutions enabling prosumers-oriented open distributed platforms, in which everyone can actively participate without being an expert system manager or without the need of engaging complicated configuration activities. Indeed these platforms require at least built-in mechanisms for 1) enhancing confidence in their usage; 2) preserving them from the threat of ageing; 3) protecting them from malicious intents.

Highly related to the above trend, is the driver of capturing the so called “Long Tail” of Users. In this case the challenges is to develop s/w solution for making service and networking infrastructures very flexible and dynamic in providing services, even in perpetual beta: i.e., possibility of evolving composite services by adding or modifying components, implying any sort of “re-deployment”.

Another important aspect to be highlighted is the emergence of “Software as a Service (SaaS)”. This driver has the potential to transform ICT. SaaS can be defined as "software deployed as a hosted service and accessed over the Internet."

In this context, requirements of software solutions will dramatically increase in terms of capabilities to adapt in dynamic environments, especially in large real systems with complex interactions: the key goal is to flex, and adjust (with little human intervention) to (even unpredicted) changes in the environment, evolving requirements, obsolescence of existing technologies, introduction of new technologies, and newly gained knowledge.

In this evolutionary vision, CASCADAS main goal is developing an autonomic component-based tool-kit to enable composition, execution and deployment of innovative services capable of flexing and dynamically self-adapting in unpredictable environments.

From a Telecommunication, ICT perspective [Exp], a service is what end-users (customers) pay for communications and contents. A service session involves autonomous


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components and is collaborative and distributed by nature. It is provided using communications infrastructure, multiple fixed and mobile devices, and associated applications.

In the internet view [Exp], on the other hand, a service is an executing component and is accessed using a communications infrastructure. Composition forms a hierarchy of services and applications. A service session involves client-server operations and is invoked in ‘procedure’ style.

Future Internet and ICT-Telecommunications convergence will eventually lead to the emergence of a new service scenarios and conceptual models.

Section 3.1 is reporting a brief description of the service/application scenario (Personal Behavioural Advertisement) selected by the project for the experimental validation of the ACE tool-kit. The same service/application scenario is adopted for the assessment studies through a questionnaire distributed both internally and externally the project.

Section 3.2 is reporting a brief description of another service/application scenario (Autonomic Mobile Social Networking) that is under consideration for potential future exploitation of Cascadas results (after the end of the project).

Both scenarios exploits the capabilities of exchanging information among user (mobile) devices and application in a dynamic context and without the direct involvement of end-users (but in the phases concerning the configuration of users/application profiles), and of enabling the applications reacting in an autonomous way to the exchanged data.

3.1 Personal Behavioural Advertisement This scenario [Del8.4] considers a crowded venue with a number of public screens, used to advertise the venue itself as well as commercial advertisements. Examples of such advertising screens can be seen in public spaces, such as museums, airports, metro and train stations, etc. In such venues, it is realistic to assume the presence of infrastructures (i.e. wireless networks, RFID receptors, etc) that provide pervasive services (e.g. downloadable maps or events program for the venue, web navigation, etc.). Likewise, it is also realistic to assume visitors to be equipped with personal mobile devices (smartphones, laptops, PDAs, etc.) through which the above services might be accessed subject to registration or other means for storing publicly accessible information on user’s interests (e.g. fidelity cards or badges).

As of today, advertising screens display information cyclically in a way independent of the context (i.e. independent of who is actually close to that screen). A smart service might exploit availability of the pervasive infrastructures, and the presence of pervasive devices, to gather publicly accessible information on users so as to adapt the contents to be shown on the basis of the peculiar interests of people detected. This would transform the advertising service with a set of desirable features in terms of effectiveness, as the exposition impact for the advertisement would be maximized, and business investment, as the level of guarantees provided on the effectiveness of the investment would be higher.

In the presence of a large number of screens and parties interested in buying time slots on them, solutions for allocating time slots and generating added value for interested parties must be identified. From this point of view, auctions appear an excellent solution as they prioritize allocation to advertisers who value them the most. Therefore, our platform employs an auction-based allocation paradigm whereby advertisers compete in a context-aware fashion in order to acquire the rights of advertising on a specific screen at a specific time.


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Figure 15 – Personal Behavioral Advertisement

3.2 Autonomic Mobile Social Networking Autonomic Mobile Social Networking (AMSN) is an innovative service concept enabling a new way of Social Networking for Mobile Users. Basic idea aims at integrating Users’ activities, preferences with real-time location data by using autonomic component-ware (e.g. Cascadas tool-kit) running on mobile devices, capable of exploiting advanced autonomic and self-* capabilities. Specifically, mobile devices will be able to collect and exchange information and data (by alone, independently from the Users actions) to perform certain tasks (requested by the Users) and to make certain decisions though distributed reasoning and self-organizing algorithms.

For example, AMSN helps in answering questions like, "When and Where can I meet my friends today?", "When and Where should we go for a business dinner tonight?", "What event can I attend this afternoon?", etc.

Novelty of the service concept (as compared to similar already available services) is that Users will not have to bother about organising combination of Users’ activities, preferences with real-time location data: AMSN will negotiate and fix everything, hiding to the Users any planning and negotiation complications, by exploiting advanced autonomic and self-organizing capabilities. Final goals are saving Users’ time and making their life easier by automating these low-level jobs.

As an example, let’s consider the task of organising a meeting between friends, i.e. the question "When and where can I meet my friends today?"

Users’ mobile device store agenda, buddy lists, profiles, preferences and other Users’ situated information. Suppose a User would like to schedule a meeting event with some people (e.g. friends) belonging to his/her social network. First the list people to be invited should be created by the Users, in order to let people know that the User would like to get together with them at a particular location at a specific time. Then, AMSN sends the invitation to the list of people and see who is interested in attending. As a further step, a kind of self-negotiation (between the Users’ mobile devices, hidden to Users) starts: goal is selecting the proper time (according to agendas) and the most preferred event (according to Users’ tastes) and the best location (easily reachable by everybody taking account of the localization) for all participants.

Once best event/location and time have been selected (as a process of self-organization hidden to Users), then, each mobile elaborates the best route and the best timing to reach


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the destination providing proper alerts and indications to Users. Each User can monitor people approaching the meeting place by watching a map, displayed on the mobile, showing people location/presence.

This is just an example of the potentialities of the service concept: AMSN can organize everything a User and his/her social network knows about people, places, and events and puts that information available to the Mobile Social Network. Moreover, autonomic self-organising capabilities will hide to the Users any boring planning and negotiating complications, saving time, low-level efforts and discovering new social opportunities autonomically.


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4 Assessment

This section reports a brief description of the adopted assessment methodology.

4.1 Introduction Following picture shows the general framework, on which assessment is grounded.

Figure 16 – General framework

In the socio-economic studies developed in WP6, whose results are reported in the previous deliverables, general framework has been modeled. Research on social needs has led to the identification of future development scenarios and the analysis of the Connected Society. In D6.1 prospective people strategic needs have been identified. These needs are dynamically changing as a consequence of emerging new environmental, social and legal opportunities and threats. This is represented on the left top corner. In section 2 of this document, an overview ICT-Telecommunication trends is presented. After a short report of the current penetration and use of the Internet, the perspective of the ICT and Telco industry is analyzed, with references to providers’ strategic goals and to


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the technological trends influencing heir strategies. This is represented on the right top corner of the figure. Cascadas Vision aims at bridging the social strategic needs and the providers goals. This is represented by the blue eye in the central part of the figure. The vision is based on Cascadas principles and goals, represented as the four pillars of the figure:

- Self Management - Self Organization - Self Similarity - Context Awareness.

The research and development work performed in the project has allowed the Consortium to substantiate Cascadas Vision into a concrete platform, moving from a conceptual to a concrete layer. This has led to the design and implementation of Cascadas Toolkit, which is represented by the spiral in the center of the figure. Cascadas toolkit enables the creation and support of a new form of services, based on autonomic communication elements (ACEs), capable of adaptive and intelligent behavior. The creation and lifecycle of these new autonomic services is represented by the colored arrows originating from the spiral of the toolkit in the figure. Cascadas final results and impacts should lead to this Future Internet landscape, which is depicted in the small images at the bottom of the picture, where people, future connected households, physical and dematerialized value networks are displayed. A sample of this forthcoming future can be taken through the development of scenarios, which aim at a simplified prospect, by capturing only few selected relevant aspects of the whole system. Scenarios are represented by the clouds over the future internet landscape. The development of these simplified scenarios allows an approximate understanding of the co-evolution of the expanded society, of the ICT Telco providers and of the future internet telecommunication services. Moreover, scenarios realize the transition from the potential of Cascadas Toolkit to the actual (although simplified) application/services, thus enabling the measurement of qualitative and quantitative indicators of results and impacts, represented by the boxes on the right bottom corner of the figure. The assessment of Cascadas is grounded on the above described framework, considering that the final goal of Cascadas solution is enabling the services for the Future Internet, so that expected results and impacts meet the Social strategic needs and the ICT-Telco strategic goals. The following sections will address the issue of how this challenge has been tackled, describing the methodological approach, the implementation and the achieved results


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4.2 Assessment Methodology

OBJECT of the assessment is the ACE TOOLKIT, as a prototype of autonomic distributed system allowing services creation, execution and management. Assessment is developed through comparison with a reference BASELINE, CURRENT SERVICE FRAMEWORK1, typically adopted in the Telco sector (addressed in section 2.2).

The general approach adopted for the assessment is represented in the following picture, where two logical chains are represented:

• the chain on the left side, shows how the most appropriate evaluation method is to be selected depending on the specific situation in which the assessment occurs, on the specific circumstances.

• the chain on the right side, shows that the most appropriate measurable indicators for the assessment should be identified depending on Cascadas vision, principles and, in particular on its goals.

Referring to the left side of the figure, the selection of the evaluation method for Cascadas assessment is based in particular on the DESMET method [Kitch1] that is a methodology in support of the evaluation of Software Engineering methods and tools. As far as the right chain is concerned, in order to define the CASCADAS assessment criteria and measurable indicators, we refer to the GOAL-QUESTION-METRIC (GQM) [Bas].

Figure 17 – Assessment approach

1 Service Framework is defined as a set of platforms, functionalities, systems and data for the creation and execution of services; furthermore current solutions include also related interfaces towards a control layer and towards systems for management and provisioning


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4.2.1 Theoretical assessment approaches In the following two sections we’ll describe the two approaches for the selection of an appropriate evaluation method and for the identification of measurable indicators for the assessment.

4.2.1.1 Guidelines for the identification of the assessment criteria and relevant metrics (GQM)

Basili et al [Bas] have proposed an approach that supports the definition of measurements: the Goal Question Metric. The GQM approach is based on the assumption that measurement is useful if it is related to the goals of the organization / project, in order to provide an effective feedback. The GQM is based upon the approach that to receive useful feedback, the organization has to specify the goals for itself and its projects, and then, in a top-down manner, having defined in this way the goals of the ‘object’ of the assessment, identify the measurement system. The GQM model consists of three levels:

- Conceptual, referring to GOAL - Operational, referring to QUESTION - Quantitative, referring to METRIC

At the conceptual level, the goal can be related to the object of the evaluation (product, processes or resources). Then, at the operational level, the goal is refined into several questions, usually in order to break down the goal into its components. Finally, at the quantitative level, a set of data is associated with every question, in order to give a quantitative ‘value’ to the level of achievement of the addressed issue. It should be noted that the data can be either i) objective (that is they do not depend on the viewpoint of the assessing actor, and therefore the measure can be repeated and the same ‘value’ can be obtained) or ii) subjective (the value depends on the viewpoint of the actor and/or on the object of the assessment). Example: Goal: improve the timeliness of change request CR processing Question 1: What is the current CR speed? Metric 1: Current Average Cycle Time (objective, measurable on current system) Question 2: Will the performance of the CR process improve with the new system? Metric 2: New system forecasted Average Cycle Time/Current Average Cycle Time *100 (subjective, forecast)

4.2.1.2 Guidelines for assessment procedures definition (DESMET) A quite general and comprehensive method for evaluating software engineering methods and tools has been developed by Kitchenham [Kitch1] under the name of DESMET. The DESMET methodology supports the selection of an appropriate evaluation method, depending on the goals and circumstances in which the evaluation is to be performed (see also [Kitch2]). The evaluation methods identified within the DESMET framework are nine:


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Quantitative Quantitative Formal Experiments Quantitative Case Studies Quantitative Surveys

Qualitative, that is Feature Analysis Qualitative Experiment Qualitative Case Studies Qualitative Screening mode Qualitative Survey Hybrid Qualitative effective Analysis Benchmarking DESMET identifies some rather specific pre-requisites and a set of criteria that guide the selection of the most suitable method. Essentially, the nine development methods are defined along two dimensions:

• the different organization of the assessment (experiment, case study, survey) • the quantitative/qualitative type of the item assessed.

Concerning the organization of the assessment:

• In a formal experiment a large number of subjects are asked to perform a task in a real situation using the alternative ‘objects’ (methods/tools) under assessment

• In a case study each different method/tool is tried out on a real project • In a survey, a large number of subjects that have gained experience with the

methods/tools to be assessed are asked to provide information (no real task or application assessed)

Concerning the type of the metrics, DESMET identifies two possibilities: i) a situation in which the assessment can establish measurable effects of using the

methods/tools in certain tasks (namely ‘quantitative’ type evaluation, in the DESMET terminology) and

ii) a situation in which the users are asked to identify their requirements, that is the features that the methods/tools should have in supporting the addressed tasks.

DESMET uses both the terms Feature Analysis and ‘Qualitative’ analysis for the latter assessment type, because it is focused on the features of the object to be assessed and the assessment is done having the users assessing the extent to which the methods/tools provide the desired features possibly in a manner depending on their personal opinion. To summarize, quantitative assessment in DESMET terminology is an objective assessment, as opposed to the qualitative/feature analysis that is a subjective one. DESMET recognizes that Feature analysis can be done alternatively by a single actor (Screening) if the number of methods/tools to be assessed is large, possibly in order to identify a candidate list of methods/tools to be assessed by more precise methods. Additionally, DESMET has identified two ‘hybrid’ evaluation methods, in the sense that they have both quantitative (objective) and qualitative (subjective) elements:

• Collated Expert Opinion: a process of assessing the quantitative effects of different methods and tools relying on the expert opinion (subjective) of senior software engineer s or managers.

• Benchmarking: a process based on running different tests/trials using the each of the alternative methods/tools to be assessed. Here the qualitative aspect is in the


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subjective choice of the tests/trials while the performance can be quantitatively assessed - usually is used for hardware comparison.

In the following table we have summarized the nine assessment methods identified by DESMET along the two methods dimensions and taking into account the number of subjects involved in the execution of the assessment. Assessment type Objective

(quantitative) Subjective (qualitative)

Hybrid

Assessment organization

Formal experiment

Quantitative experiment

Feature Analysis experiment

Benchmarking

Case study Quantitative case study

Feature Analysis case study

Large sample

Feature Analysis survey

Small sample

Collated expert opinion/Qualitative Effects Analysis

Survey

One person

Quantitative survey

Feature Analysis – screening mode

4.2.2 Selection of an appropriate evaluation method

According to the left path in Figure 2, an analysis of the assessment situation needs to be performed, considering the following circumstances: - The evaluation is not referred to a specific project/organization, but to potential

exploitation/benefits of Cascadas solution. - The expected impact is both qualitative and quantitative (even if it might not be

measurable) - The object of the evaluation consist of the specific Cascadas Toolkit, within the

general autonomic communication and computing paradigm - The scope of impact spreads to the lifecycle of services, possibly including service

“evolution” within business eco-systems - Cascadas is still under development - Users proficiency is high from a theoretical point of view, but practical experience is

quite low. - The evaluation maturity of the Consortium is low (not shared evaluation methods,

metrics and standard).


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The most appropriate evaluation type and procedure have been selected, according to DESMET framework (see section 4.2.1.2): Evaluation type: subjective analysis Evaluation procedure: collated expert opinion

In particular, expert subjective opinion is used to assess both qualitative functionalities and quantitative effects/impacts of Cascadas solution.

4.2.3 Identification of measurable indicators

The GQM technique addressed in section 4.2.1.1 allows the identification of qualitative and quantitative indicators. Starting from main principles and goals, sub-goals have to be specified and decomposed, then appropriate questions are to be generated in order to drive the identification of the related indicators and metrics (both qualitative and quantitative). The following picture summarizes the overall process that has led to the identification of 16 measurable indicators (ten qualitative and six quantitative). The 16 measurable indicators have been devised taking the four Cascadas principles and goals as a starting point for the GQM method, together with the information strategic needs of both people and business and with the current service framework . Proceeding from the Cascadas goals and solutions (the Toolkit), we have devised firstly ten qualitative indicators, that represent general Cascadas features in support of the whole the service life cycle. The assessment of the qualitative indicators aims in particular at evidencing strength and weaknesses of Cascadas features. Secondly, in order to have a more specific assessment of potential Cascadas results, we have devised six quantitative indicators, three of which are of more technical nature and closely related to some of the qualitative indicators previously identified. Finally, taking into account all the indicators addressed so far, we have identified the remaining three indicators that relate to economical aspects of Cascadas results.


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Figure 18 –Overall process that has led to the identification of 16 measurable indicators (ten qualitative and six quantitative)

4.2.3.1 Qualitative Cascadas indicators Here follows how, more in detail and according to the GQM approach, the qualitative indicators for Cascadas assessment have been devised.


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Figure 19 – Qualitative indicators

For what concerns the qualitative indicators, the interplay among the Cascadas solutions (especially its founding principles/goals), the people and business strategic needs and the current technologies main drawbacks/bottlenecks has led to the following questions concerning, at a high abstraction level, the Cascadas features, seen as abstract functionalities in support of the whole service life-cycle:

Service implementation (creation/composition):

a) How does the approach manage service context complexity (related to Context Awareness goal)?

b) How does the approach allow customization of services for the long tail (related to Self Management goal)?

Service maintenance (reconfiguration, security, reliability)

c) How does the approach support seamless service life-cycle management (related to Self Management goal)?

Service execution

d) How does the approach handle systems heterogeneity during execution (related to Self Management goal)?

e) How does the approach handle increasing software complexity (related to Self Organization goal)?

f) How does the approach manage huge amounts of data during execution (related to Self Similarity goal)?

g) How does the approach manage dynamic load increase during execution (related to Self Similarity goal)?


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Finally, ten qualitative Cascadas indicators have been identified:

Service implementation (creation/composition):

a) How does the approach manage service context complexity? Indicator 1: Effective auto-configuration to changing execution context

b) How does the approach allow customization of services for the long tail ? Indicator 2: Ease of creation/configuration of services Indicator 3: Flexibility in composing applications including traditional services

Service maintenance (reconfiguration, security, reliability)

c) How does the approach support seamless service life-cycle management? Indicator 10: Service management simplicity and security along the life-cycle

Service execution

d) How does the approach handle systems heterogeneity during execution? Indicator 6: Capability of execution of services developed in different domains Indicator 8: Flexibility in organization of data management Indicator 9: Uniform governance of Distributed Service Framework across different computing/network context

e) How does the approach handle increasing software complexity? Indicator 7: Self-organization capabilities concerning collective service behaviour

f) How does the approach manage huge amounts of data during execution? Indicator 4: scalability in handling data intensive applications

g) How does the approach manage dynamic load increase during execution? Indicator 5: Network agility (optimization of computing/communication resources)

4.2.3.2 Quantitative (measurable) indicators Starting from the above addressed qualitative indicators, we have proceeded in two steps in order to define a sensible (even if surely not comprehensive) set of quantitative (that is measurable) indicators for Cascadas. As a first step, three quantitative indicators have been determined by extending the GQM approach for three of the previously identified qualitative indicators, as shown in following figure, in order to arrive to measurable indicators (metrics):

- in order to assess with a measurable indicator to what extent Cascadas solutions allow managing huge amounts of data, we have identified, related to the qualitative “network agility” indicator, the metric “server utilization rate” (indicator 11) , that is the ‘target’ average server utilization rate that is considered while planning computing resources.

- in order to assess with a measurable indicator to what extent Cascadas solutions

allow managing dynamic load increase during execution, we have identified, related to the qualitative “scalability in handling data intensive applications” indicator, the metric “percentage of load increase managed without manual intervention” (indicator 12)


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- finally, to give a value to the capability of Cascadas to support seamless (both simple and secure) service life cycle management, we have identified the metric related to the time to recover from faults (faults recovery latency, indicator 13).

Figure 20 – Quantitative indicators

As a second and last step in the quantitative indicators identification, in order to assess Cascadas potential results from a general economic point of view, it is natural to refer to the standard cost categories from the business point of view: capital expenses (payment by a business for basic assets - goods and services) and operating expenses (payments for day-to-day operations such as payroll, inventory, maintenance and advertising). Therefore we have identified three quantitative economic indicators:

- indicator 13: savings in capital expenditures; - indicator 14: savings in operating expenses; - indicator 15: savings in energy related expenses.

The last indicator is obviously a sub-category of indicator 14, nonetheless it is well worthwhile to highlight this aspect during Cascadas assessment, as, in the current worldwide context, energy costs are surging, greater attention is given to environmental issues, especially concerning European Union actions aimed at promoting sustainable products and technologies in order to achieve sustainable consumption, production and industry.


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4.2.4 Assessment Procedure Expert assessment of qualitative and quantitative effects/impacts is based on a questionnaire that will be filled in by Cascadas partners and external Stakeholders. WHO :

• Partners and External Stakeholders2 • Statistics on the population that was targeted (according to 3rd ESR comments) are

reported in Appendix 2. WHAT :

1) people read the PBA scenario or assisted the demonstrations of the ACE toolkit and PBA scenario at booth J03 at ICT2008 Exibition

2) people answers the assessment questionnaire (16 questions) WHEN:

• internal (by July 24th, 2008) • external:

o students involved in thesis on autonomic technologies (by July 24th, 2008); o selected visitors to booth J03 at ICT2008 Exhibition;

HOW :

• possible values of the answers to questions are reported in the following table; the table associate to to each possible assessment answer the corresponding numerical value used for the numerical elaboration of the answers.

Possible answers to assessment questions Numerical value Strength ++ 5 Strength + 4 Neutral 3 Weakness - 2 Weakness -- 1

2 External Stakeholders have been contacted (and kept anonymous) by TI.


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5 Assessment results

Figure 21a reports the average of the numerical values associated to the answers given by the persons involved in answering the questionnaire. Appendix 2 provides some additional views on the assessment results.

The following questions had a score higher than 4.25:

• Q7 (4.41): self-organization capabilities

• Q8 (4.38): degree of flexibility in the organization of data

The following questions had a score between 3.75 and 4.24:

• Q1 (4.21): capabilities of auto-configuration to the service execution context

• Q12 (4.18): scalability/load-balancing in executing services and managing sets of data

• Q15 (4.12): savings in operating expenses

• Q13 (4.06): shorter fault recovery latency

• Q4 (3.91): scalability in handling data intensive applications, requiring a real-time view of the huge volume of highly dynamic information

• Q10 (3.79): service management simplicity and security along the whole service life-cycle

• Q11 (3.76): server utilization rate

• Q16 (3.76): savings in energy costs

The following questions had a score between 3.25 and 3.74:

• Q6 (3.59): openness of execution environment for services developed in different domains

• Q5 (3.29): optimization of computing and communication resources

The following questions had a score lower than 3.24:

• Q14 (3.03): savings in Capital Expenses

• Q9 (3.00): governance of Distributed Service Framework across computing/network contexts

• Q2 (2.74): creation and composition of (communication and content) services

• Q3 (2.62): flexibility in composing application including traditional services


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Average

0,00

0,50

1,00

1,50

2,00

2,50

3,00

3,50

4,00

4,50

5,00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Questions

Aver

age

Figure 21a – Assessment results

Assessment results reflect a general positive judgment of Cascadas architecture and technological approach. The assessment values can provide a filling on strong and weak points of the solutions elaborated by Cascadas. The questions with an average in the assessment lower than 3.25 identify some of the topics that need to be further investigated beyond Cascadas.

Average

0,00

0,50

1,00

1,50

2,00

2,50

3,00

3,50

4,00

4,50

5,00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Questions

Aver

age

total popolationinternal population

Figure 21b – Assessment results

Figure 21b compares the average of the assessments provided by the total population (in blue) with the one of internal people involved in the questionnaire (in red). As suspected, the assessment of internal people is providing, in most cases, higher average marks, thus showing a greater confidence on project results (maybe motivated by a deeper know-how on the technology and on the potential exploitation of the results. In addition, some lower marks in some questions could be motivated by demonstrations missing wider coverage of some aspects of the project results.


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The lesson learnt has been used in setting-up the WP7 E-learning material. In particular, the questions are grouped in the following way:

• The following questions had a score higher than 4.25: Q1, Q2, Q10, Q12, Q14, Q15 • The following questions had a score between 3.75 and 4.24: Q3, Q4, Q5, Q7, Q8,

and Q13 • The following questions had a score between 3.25 and 3.74: Q9 and Q16 • The following questions had a score lower than 3.24: Q6 and Q11


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6 Conclusions

A first important conclusion is that both Telco and Future Internet have in common a win-win goal: developing a decentralized an open distributed framework of services and data, fostering broad federations of Players and do-it-yourself innovative services and knowledge management allowing not only Providers but above all people (individuals, playing the role of “Prosumers”) to be at the center of Information Society [Alf], [Manz1], [Manz2], [Manz3].

This evolutionary trend will allow a wide range of new activities of Information Society that today are simply not possible or impractical. However, to make this vision real, a deep re-thinking of ways of developing and deploying distributed service and networking eco-systems is required. This is the area of the studies of Cascadas.

Assessment results reflect a general positive judgment of Cascadas architecture and technological approach, highlighting points of strength in comparison with the current Internet and Telco Service Frameworks. Nevertheless indicators Q2, Q3, Q9, and Q14 (creation/composition, application integration, multi-domain DSF, and CAPEX savings) have got some remarks of weakness: further investigations should be focused to try improving these areas.


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7 Appendix 1: Assessment questionnaire

7.1 Notes for the compilation For each of the sixteen indicators in the questionnaire, please:

1. read the question in the leftmost column of the questionnaire, that aims at assessing a specific Cascadas feature.

2. check the appropriate column with symbol √ whether you think if the Cascadas specific feature addressed shows a strength or a weakness, or is neutral, in comparison to the reference technologies.

3. (optional) explain your choice by inserting your view/opinion in the ‘Comment’ column.

The first part of the questionnaire includes 10 qualitative indicators, related to the different phases of the service life-cycle: creation/composition, execution, overall life-cycle (maintenance). The second part of the questionnaire includes 6 quantitative indicators, the assessment of which is possibly connected to the replies given previously concerning the qualitative indicators.

7.2 Questionnaire form The questionnaire form is divided in two tables:

1. Qualitative Indicators;

2. Quantitative Indicators.

The tables contain a row for each indicator.

The first column of the questionnaire tables contains the progressive number of the indicator.

The second column reports a question related to the indicator to be assessed.

The columns 3 to 7 refer to the degree of strength and weakness to be assigned to the feature evaluated.

The last column is available for the comments of the evaluator.


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Nr. Qualitative indicators

STRE

NGTH

++

STRE

NGTH

+

NEU

TRAL

WEA

KNESS ‐

WEA

KNESS ‐‐

Comments

Service Creation and Composition

1 Are Cascadas capabilities of auto-configuration to the service execution context a strength or a weakness in comparison to the reference technologies?

2 Is Cascadas creation and composition of (communication and content) services a strength or a weakness in order to break the barriers for providing a large number of unique/personalized services to small customers (namely, the long tail)?

3 Is Cascadas flexibility in composing application including traditional services a strength or a weakness in comparison to the reference technologies?

Service Execution 4 Is Cascadas scalability in handling

data intensive applications, requiring a real-time view of the huge volume of highly dynamic information (as required by pervasive/mobile Telco-ICT services) a strength or a weakness in comparison to the reference technologies?

5 Is Cascadas network agility (optimization of computing and communication resources, e.g., dynamic allocation services-servers) a strength or a weakness in comparison to the reference technologies?

6 Does Cascadas show a strength or a weakness concerning the openness of execution environment for services developed in different domains in comparison to the reference technologies (maybe porting existing services to ACEs and sharing ontologies among different domains)?

7 Are Cascadas self-organization capabilities concerning collective service behavior a strength or a weakness in comparison to the reference technologies?


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8 Is Cascadas degree of flexibility in the organization of data management (that allows handling high volumes of highly-dynamic data/information) a strength or a weakness in comparison to the reference technologies?

9 Has Cascadas a strength or a weakness concerning the governance of Distributed Service Framework DSF across computing/network contexts (that is, its support for service management enables diverse types of actors - e.g., prosumers’ ecosystem - to offer services and facilitates the coalitions of service providers)

Service Life Cycle management 10 Does Cascadas allow Service

Management simplicity and security along the whole service life-cycle, e.g. maintenance, access control, actors’ trustworthiness (enabling services for the long tail - see also nr. 2)?

Nr. Quantitative indicators

STRE

NGTH

++

STRE

NGTH

+

NEU

TRAL

WEA

KNESS ‐

WEA

KNESS ‐‐

Comments

11 Today a typical server utilization rate (SUR) is 20% (Source: Forrester Research Inc.). That is, computing resources are planned now at an average 20% SUR. Can be Cascadas approach considered a strength because it potentially enables server planning at a 60% - or more - SUR, thus allowing same workload with less servers?

SUR: server utilization rate

SUR > +60%

60% > SUR > 25%

25% > SUR > 15%

15% > SUR > 10%

SUR<

10%


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12 Does Cascadas allow greater scalability and more effective load-balancing in executing services and managing huge sets of data in comparison to the reference technologies?

Scalability metric SM: percentage of load increase managed without manual intervention

SM > +45

%

45% > SM > 30%

30% > SM > 10%

10% > SM > 5%

SM <5%

13 Does Cascadas enable shorter Fault

Recovery Latency (FRL) in comparison to the reference technology?

FRL metric: percentage ratio of Cascadas FR latency to reference FR latency

FRL< 50%

80%>FRL>50%

120%

>FRL>80%

150%

>FRL>120

%

FRL>15

0%

14 Does Cascadas enable savings in Capital

Expenses (SCX) (hardware/software, facilities spaces) in comparison to reference techs?

SCX metric: percentage ratio of difference between reference capital expenses minus Cascadas capital expenses to reference capital expenses

SCX>

20%

20% > SCX

> 10%

10% >SCX >‐10

%

‐10%

> SCX

> ‐20%

SCX<

‐20%

15 Does Cascadas allow savings in

operating expenses (SOX), such as concerning service/systems development and maintenance costs in comparison to reference technologies costs?

SOX metric: percentage ratio of difference between reference operating expenses and Cascadas operating expenses to reference operating expenses

SOX>

20%

20% > SOX > 10

%

10% > SOX > ‐10%

‐10%

>SO

X>‐20%

S0X<

‐20%

16 Does Cascadas allow savings in energy

(SE) costs in comparison to reference technologies?


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SE metric: percentage ratio of difference between reference energy costs and Cascadas energy costs to reference energy costs

SE>20%

20% > SE > 10

%

10% >SE >‐10%

‐10%

>SE>

‐20%

SE<‐20

%


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8 Appendix 2: Statistics on questionnaire answers

This appendix reports some statistics concerning the persons involved in answering the questionnaire, and some additional view on assessment results.

The persons involved in the questionnaires have different level of familiarities with the project:

• Internal: they are persons that directly contributed to the project activities;

• Project-aware: they are students that studied project deliverables and used project results in order to elaborate their theses;

• External: they are persons that were not involved in the project activities; they were contacted by Telecom Italia during the Cascadas demonstration event at Booth J03 of ICT2008 Conference and Exhibition.

Familiarity with the Project

9

23

2Internal

External

Project-aware

Figure 22 – Familiarity with the Project

The following figures report statistics on sex and age on the persons that answered to the questionnaire.

Sex

28

6MF

Age5

1013

6 <3030-3940-49>49

Figure 23 – Sex and Age information

As illustrated in Figure 24, both academic and industry context were involved; moreover, the questionnaire was filled by a representative of an Info Provider.

Affiliation2

11

1

20

Student

Academy

Industry

InfoProvider

Figure 24 – Affiliation statistics

Most of the involved persons have a technical expertise (Figure 25): in addition to expertise on IT or Telco-ICT fields, a person with a background in biology was involved.


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Expertise

22

10

11 IT

Telco-ICT

other-Tech

no-Tech

Figure 25 – Information on the background

Figure 26 reports some statistics on the familiarities of the interviewed persons on the autonomic-related technologies. Most of the involved persons were either expert or, at least, aware on autonomic technologies.

Familiarity with the technology

189

7Expert

Aware

Not-aware

Figure 26 – Information on the background

Figure 27 reports how the Average values changes depending on the level of familiarity with the Project: the average of the scores of the contributors to the project is 3.96, while the average for the external people is 3.58.

Average of votes

3,3

3,4

3,5

3,6

3,7

3,8

3,9

4

Internal External Project-aware

Figure 27 – Average of the scores w.r.t. project familiarity

Figure 28 reports how the Average values changes depending on the level of familiarity with autonomic technologies: the average of the scores of expert is 3.93 (3.88 for the persons not involved in the project), while the average for the persons which are aware of this technology is 3.49). The average of the scores provided by the persons not familiar with autonomic solutions is 3.28.


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Average

2,8

3

3,2

3,4

3,6

3,8

4

Expert Aware Not-aware

Figure 28 – Average of the scores w.r.t. technology familiarity

Finally, Figure 29 reports the complete view of the numerical values associated to the provided answers.

Scores

0

5

10

15

20

25

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Questions

Value 5Value 4Value 3Value 2Value 1

Figure 29 – Scores associated to the answers

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