Phil.Lic. Toni Ruokolainen will defend his doctoral thesis A Model-Driven Approach to Service Ecosystem Engineering on Friday 22nd of February 2013 at noon in the University of Helsinki Main Building, Unioninkatu 34, Auditorium XIV (old part), 3rd floor. His opponent is Associate Professor Marten van Sinderen (University of Twente, Netherlands) and custos Professor Sasu Tarkoma (University of Helsinki).

A Model-Driven Approach to Service Ecosystem Engineering

Societies world-wide are experiencing a constant servitization, a transition from traditional production and manufacturing to delivery and consumption of services. The transition is necessitated by societal and economic forces affecting individuals, organizations and enterprises. For individuals, the increased standard of living and increased leisure time have created a demand for new kinds of services. For governmental organizations, ageing of the population has increased the demand for efficient production and delivery of services, especially  addressing health-care, elderly participation and security. For enterprises, globalization and commoditization of  products have necessitated passage from monolithic, product-driven business to networked and service-based business.

The servitization has given rise to the emergence of so-called service ecosystems. A service ecosystem is a socio-technical complex system that enables service-based collaborations between entities, such as enterprises, institutions and individuals. Although establishment of service ecosystems has been identified as fundamental for addressing the societal and economic forces, there are two foundational research challenges to be solved. Firstly, from an engineering perspective, there is an evident lack of a service ecosystem engineering which provides means for analysis, design, instrumentation and operation of service ecosystems. Especially, interoperability and governability have not been addressed sufficiently in the context of service ecosystem engineering. Secondly, from a business perspective, the current approaches for service ecosystem establishment do not provide sufficient support for ecosystem sustainability. Attaining service ecosystem sustainability requires facilities that enable efficient utilization of core  competencies, opportunistic and flexible business networking, and support for operating in progressive business environments.

The thesis addresses these research challenges by proposing service ecosystem engineering as a means for transitioning from contemporary ad hoc service ecosystems to sustainable ones. The individual contributions of this thesis include engineering tools and methods which enable analysis, design, instrumentation and operation of sustainable service ecosystems. The contributions can be utilized for mitigating risks associated for example with technology dependency and migration, and for supporting business decision-making when joining and operating in service ecosystems. The contributions enable approaches that utilize explicit architecture models for guaranteeing interoperability during service ecosystem operation. Furthermore, support for service ecosystem governance is provided.

Availability of the dissertation

An electronic version of the doctoral dissertation is available on the e-thesis site of the University of Helsinki at http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-10-8621-2.

Printed copies are available on request from Toni Ruokolainen: 09-191 51354 or toni.ruokolainen@cs.helsinki.fi.