Purpose: While it is commonly recognised that Big Data have an immense potential to generate value for business organisations, appropriating value from Big Data and, in particular, Big Data-enabled analytics is still an open issue for many organisations. The purpose of this paper is to develop a maturity model to support organisations in the realisation of the value created by Big Data. Design/methodology/approach: The maturity model is developed following a qualitative approach based on literature analysis and semi-structured interviews with domain experts. The completeness and usefulness of the model is evaluated qualitatively by practitioners, whereas the applicability of the model is evaluated by Big Data maturity assessments in three real-world organisations. Findings: The proposed maturity model is considered exhaustive by domain experts and has helped the three assessed organisations to develop a more critical understanding of the next steps to take. Originality/value: The maturity model integrates existing industry-developed maturity models into one single coherent Big Data maturity model. The proposed model answers the call for research on Big Data to abstract from technical issues to focus on the business implications of Big Data initiatives.

The processes with adaptive Web services framework couples design-time and runtime mechanisms to flexibly and adoptively execute managed Web-services-based business processes.

The extensive adoption of Web service-based applications in dynamic business scenarios, such as on-demand computing or highly reconfigurable virtual enterprises, advocates for methods and tools for the management of Web service nonfunctional aspects, such as Quality of Service (QoS). Concerning contracts on Web service QoS, the literature has mostly focused on the contract definition and on mechanisms for contract enactment, such as the monitoring of the satisfaction of negotiated QoS guarantees. In this context, this article proposes a framework for the automation of the Web service contract specification and establishment. An extensible model for defining both domain-dependent and domain-independent Web service QoS dimensions and a method for the automation of the contract establishment phase are proposed. We describe a matchmaking algorithm for the ranking of functionally equivalent services, which orders services on the basis of their ability to fulfill the service requestor requirements, while maintaining the price below a specified budget. We also provide an algorithm for the configuration of the negotiable part of the QoS Service-Level Agreement (SLA), which is used to configure the agreement with the top-ranked service identified in the matchmaking phase. Experimental results show that, in a utility theory perspective, the contract establishment phase leads to efficient outcomes. We envision two advanced application scenarios for the Web service contracting framework proposed in this article. First, it can be used to enhance Web services self-healing properties in reaction to QoS-related service failures; second, it can be exploited in process optimization for the online reconfiguration of candidate Web services QoS SLAs.

Quality of service (QoS) can be a critical element for achieving the business goals of a service provider, for the acceptance of a service by the user, or for guaranteeing service characteristics in a composition of services, where a service is defined as either a software or a software-support (i.e., infrastructural) service which is available on any type of network or electronic channel. The goal of this article is to compare the approaches to QoS description in the literature, where several models and metamodels are included. consider a large spectrum of models and metamodels to describe service quality, ranging from ontological approaches to define quality measures, metrics, and dimensions, to metamodels enabling the specification of quality-based service requirements and capabilities as well as of SLAs (Service-Level Agreements) and SLA templates for service provisioning. Our survey is performed by inspecting the characteristics of the available approaches to reveal which are the consolidated ones and which are the ones specific to given aspects and to analyze where the need for further research and investigation lies. The approaches here illustrated have been selected based on a systematic review of conference proceedings and journals spanning various research areas in computer science and engineering, including: distributed, information, and telecommunication systems, networks and security, and service-oriented and grid computing.