Since its inception, Service Orientation has promised to oer seamless alignment of the business and IT aspects of service-oriented systems. Practitioners, however, often report that such alignment is far from being solved. Specically, current research in aligning services either re- mains at a too abstract, strategic level, or is too technology-oriented to be really useful in practice. In spite of being an \old" problem, business-IT alignment is still a dilemma. What makes alignment so dicult? In this work we address this fundamental question by questioning what should be aligned, and what are the concerns hindering alignment. This paper explores the conceptual gaps around the notion of service in the two economic- and IT perspectives. By framing the core constructs of Ser- vice Orientation and contrasting those constructs between the economic- and IT perspectives, this paper elicits ve core alignment concerns. We illustrate the concerns using a real-life case study featuring an airport baggage handling system. The alignment concerns pinpoint promising solutions in which the alignment problem can be solved.

1. Why is Aligning Economic- and IT Services so!
Difficult?
Maryam Razavian
VU University Amsterdam

2. 2

3. 20 years of Business-IT Alignment
REPRINTED FROM IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL32, NO 1, 1993; © 1993, 1999
472
HENDERSON AND VENKATRAMAN
0018-8670/99/$5.00 © 1999 IBM
IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL38, NOS 2&3, 1999

4. Service Orientation and Alignment
Service Orientation has promised
seamless alignment between business
and IT
Practitioners still report the problem of
alignment is far from being solved

5. The focus of this work
Why is alignment so difficult?
What needs to be aligned?
What are the main concerns?

6. It all depends on your perspective
6

7. What is Business, anyway?
Economic

8. What is a service?!
Economic perspective
• “Services are deeds, processes and performances” (Zeithaml and Bittner,
Service Marketing, New York McGraw‐Hill, 1996, p.5.)
• “… economic activities … bringing about a desired change” (Service Marketing,
People, Technology, Strategy, 4th edition. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,
2001)
• “... any act of performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially
intangible” (P. Kotler. Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning,
Implementation and Control, 6th edition. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,
1988)
• A service system is a value-coproduction configuration of people, technology,
other internal and external service systems, and shared information” (Jim Spohrer,
Paul Maglio, John Bailey, and Daniel, Computer, January 2007, p. 72)

9. What is a Service?!
IT Perspective
• Web Service: a software system designed to support interoperable
machine-to-machine interaction over a network
• SOA: a logical representation of a repeatable activity that has a specified
outcome
• Software services represent the functionality that the underlying pieces
of software offer [OASIS]
• A Service is a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities,
where the access is provided using a prescribed interface [Gridipedia]

10. Two perspectives on services design
Economic
Perspective
Technical
Perspective
Services
Services for whose
provisioning someone has to
pay!
Logical representation of a
functionality with a public
interface.

11. Two perspectives on services design
Economic
Perspective
Technical
Perspective
Services
Different Concepts
Different Objectives
Incompatibilities

12. What Alignment Implies
• Alignment: process perspective
• Linking
• Balancing
• Alignment: outcome
• Harmony
• Making a Coherent Whole

13. Our Approach
A
Economic
Perspective
IT
Perspective
C
B
Alignment
Q) What are the core elements that need to be aligned?
Q) What are the concerns hindering the alignment?

14. Our Approach
Modeling Notations
Baggage Handling System
Economic
Perspective
IT
Perspective

15. Shared Elements Between Perspectives
Economic
Perspective
IT
Perspective
ACTOR
Legal entity
participant
SERVICE
commercial services
logically grouped
operations that can
be invoked
economic value
transfers
message exchanges
pricing and service
quality
valued by the
customer
interface specification
SLA
INTERACTION
CONTRACT

16. Baggage Handling Services
Airport
Airline
Ground Handler
Airline
Security Provider
1

17. Baggage Handling Services-Economic Perspective
[MONEY]
[MONEY]
[MONEY]
[Screening]
[Handled bagage]
[Bagage transportation]
[Bagage Management]
1. Actors
2. Services
3. Contracts
4. Interactions
Legend
Actor
[MONEY]
[MONEY]
[Label]
Value
interface
Value
port
Value
Transfer
AND
OR
Explosion
e3value
element element element

18. Baggage Handling Services-IT Perspective
1. Actors
2. Services
SoaML (Service
Architecture)

19. Baggage Handling Services-IT Perspective
Contracts
SoaML (Service Contract)

20. Baggage Handling Services-IT Perspective
Interactions
SoaML (Service Choreography)

21. Alignment
Corresponding elements should be linked where needed
Link
[MONEY]
[Bagage management]
Link

22. Economic and IT Perspective
Discrepancies

23. Concerns for Aligning
General concerns
that cross-cut the two perspectives
IT Perspective
1. Flexibility
2. Adaptability
3. Reusability
Economic Perspective
1. Profitability
2. Economic Reciprocity
Incompatible

24. On Actors (1)
Economic
Perspective
• Actors instances (e.g., Schiphol
Airport)
• Why? because it represents a
business model: how each actor
would make profit or increase utility
IT
Perspective
• Actor type
• Why? Because actors should be
able to come and go on the fly.
Concern 1. How to align actors in such a way that their
profitability and openness are ensured simultaneously?
Possible Alignment Solution: Market Segments

25. On Actors (2)
Economic
Perspective
IT
Perspective
• Why? because it is not the entity
that exchanges value in the
marketplace
• Why? because it is the
consumer of the services
offered by `Ground Handler
System' and `Security
Provider’
Concern 2. how to relate non-legal entities
to legal entities?
Possible Alignment Solution: Expense Carrier

26. On Services
IT
Perspective
Economic
Perspective
• Why? because it focuses on value
activities that an actor is willing to
pay for
Profitability
•
Why? because it is a repeatable and
reusable capability
Reusability
Concern 3. how to design services in such a way
that their profitability and reusability are ensured simultaneously?
Possible Alignment Solution: Capability in the economic perspective

27. On Contracts
IT
Perspective
Economic
Perspective
[MONEY]
[Bagage management]
• Contract is value interface (What
determines the economic value of a service)
àProfitability
• Contract is a service interface (An
agreement on how the service is provided or
consumed) àInteroperability
Concern 4. How to align contracts in such a way that the contract is
value-determinable while it supports interoperability?
Possible Alignment Solution: Analysis models for transforming value interfaces to operations

28. On Interactions
Economic
Perspective
IT
Perspective
[MONEY]
[Bagage management]
Economic Reciprocity
(Transactionality)
Openness
Concern 5. How to align interactions in such a way that openness and
transactionality are supported simultaneously?
Possible Alignment Solution: models that frames and
highlights how using
independent message transfers a transaction is realized.

29. Alignment: an architectural problem
N
W
E
S
Alignment as an
architecting
problem
Alignment
Concerns
Guide Architects
Reasoning

30. What about using architecting techniques?
Use architecting
techniques to guide
one’s reasoning
Treat concerns as first class elements
Frame the concerns

31. Framing Alignment Concern
Compensation
Alignment
Airport
C
P
Schiphol
+
openness
profitability
A viewpoint for aligning actors

32. Stakeholders and their concerns
Q) Who are the stakeholders and what are their
concerns?
Technical debt
profit
Capital
preservation

33. An then?
Solve the Old Alignment
Problem