The goal of this dissertation is to find and provide the basis for a managerial tool that allows a firm to easily express its business logic. The methodological basis for this work is design science, where the researcher builds an artifact to solve a specific problem. In this case the aim is to provide an ontology that makes it possible to explicit a firm's business model. In other words, the proposed artifact helps a firm to formally describe its value proposition, its customers, the relationship with them, the necessary intra- and inter-firm infrastructure and its profit model. Such an ontology is relevant because until now there is no model that expresses a company's global business logic from a pure business point of view. Previous models essentially take an organizational or process perspective or cover only parts of a firm's business logic. The four main pillars of the ontology, which are inspired by management science and enterprise- and processmodeling, are product, customer interface, infrastructure and finance. The ontology is validated by case studies, a panel of experts and managers. The dissertation also provides a software prototype to capture a company's business model in an information system. The last part of the thesis consists of a demonstration of the value of the ontology in business strategy and Information Systems (IS) alignment.
Structure of this thesis:
The dissertation is structured in nine parts:
Chapter 1 presents the motivations of this research, the research methodology with which the goals shall be achieved and why this dissertation present a contribution to research.
Chapter 2 investigates the origins, the term and the concept of business models. It defines what is meant by business models in this dissertation and how they are situated in the context of the firm. In addition this chapter outlines the possible uses of the business model concept.
Chapter 3 gives an overview of the research done in the field of business models and enterprise ontologies.
Chapter 4 introduces the major contribution of this dissertation: the business model ontology. In this part of the thesis the elements, attributes and relationships of the ontology are explained and described in detail.
Chapter 5 presents a case study of the Montreux Jazz Festival which's business model was captured by applying the structure and concepts of the ontology. In fact, it gives an impression of how a business model description based on the ontology looks like.
Chapter 6 shows an instantiation of the ontology into a prototype tool: the Business Model Modelling Language BM2L. This is an XML-based description language that allows to capture and describe the business model of a firm and has a large potential for further applications.
Chapter 7 is about the evaluation of the business model ontology. The evaluation builds on literature review, a set of interviews with practitioners and case studies.
Chapter 8 gives an outlook on possible future research and applications of the business model ontology. The main areas of interest are alignment of business and information technology IT/information systems IS and business model comparison. Finally, chapter 9 presents some conclusions.

The business model ontology a proposition in a design science approach

A system and method for communicating information among members of a distributed discussion group having peripheral communication devices involves communication between the peripheral communication devices and a central agent. The central agent receives and stores messages intended for at least one other group member. It creates a notice informing the at least one other group member that such a message exists and containing a channel (e.g., a hyperlink) directly to the memory location of the message. The at least one other group member may then elect to retrieve the message and may also elect to reply to the message. Such replies are transmitted from the peripheral device of the at least one other group member to the central agent, where it is stored and associated with the original message. Messages are retained in memory, thereby causing discussions to be maintained.

Centrifugal communication and collaboration method

We describe the design and deployment of Many Eyes, a public Web site where users may upload data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on discussions. The goal of the site is to support collaboration around visualizations at a large scale by fostering a social style of data analysis in which visualizations not only serve as a discovery tool for individuals but also as a medium to spur discussion among users. To support this goal, the site includes novel mechanisms for end-user creation of visualizations and asynchronous collaboration around those visualizations. In addition to describing these technologies, we provide a preliminary report on the activity of our users.

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ManyEyes: a Site for Visualization at Internet Scale

https://cg.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/intern/seminar/surfaceReconstruction_survey%20of%20marching%20cubes.pdf

A survey of the marching cubes algorithm

VisTrails is a new system that enables interactive multiple-view visualizations by simplifying the creation and maintenance of visualization pipelines, and by optimizing their execution. It provides a general infrastructure that can be combined with existing visualization systems and libraries. A key component of VisTrails is the visualization trail (vistrail), a formal specification of a pipeline. Unlike existing dataflow-based systems, in VisTrails there is a clear separation between the specification of a pipeline and its execution instances. This separation enables powerful scripting capabilities and provides a scalable mechanism for generating a large number of visualizations. VisTrails also leverages the vistrail specification to identify and avoid redundant operations. This optimization is especially useful while exploring multiple visualizations. When variations of the same pipeline need to be executed, substantial speedups can be obtained by caching the results of overlapping subsequences of the pipelines. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of VisTrails, and show its effectiveness in different application scenarios.

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VisTrails: enabling interactive multiple-view visualizations

Current visualization systems are designed around a single user model, making it awkward for large research teams to collectively analyse large data sets. The paper shows how the popular data flow approach to visualization can be extended to allow multiple users to collaborate-each running their own visualization pipeline but with the opportunity to connect in data generated by a colleague, Thus collaborative visualizations are 'programmed' in exactly the same 'plug-and-play' style as is now customary for single-user mode. The paper describes a system architecture that can act as a basis for the collaborative extension of any data flow visualization system, and the ideas are demonstrated through a particular implementation in terms of IRIS Explorer.

Collaborative visualization

Visualization is a powerful tool for analyzing data and presenting results in science, engineering and medicine. This paper reviews ways in which it can be used in distributed and/or collaborative environments. Distributed visualization addresses a number of resource allocation problems, including the location of processing close to data for the minimization of data traffic. The advent of the Grid Computing paradigm and the link to Web Services provides fresh challenges and opportunities for distributed visualization—including the close coupling of simulations and visualizations in a steering environment. Recent developments in collaboration have seen the growth of specialized facilities (such as Access Grid) which have supplemented traditional desktop video conferencing using the Internet and multicast communications. Collaboration allows multiple users—possibly at remote sites—to take part in the visualization process at levels which range from the viewing of images to the shared control of the visualization methods. In this review, we present a model framework for distributed and collaborative visualization and assess a selection of visualization systems and frameworks for their use in a distributed or collaborative environment. We also discuss some examples of enabling technology and review recent work from research projects in this field.

Distributed and Collaborative Visualization

Grid computing provides a challenge for visualization system designers. In this research, we evolve the dataflow concept to allow parts of the visualization process to be executed remotely in a secure and seamless manner. We see dataflow at three levels: an abstract specification of the intent of the visualization; a binding of these abstract modules to a specific software system; and then a binding of software to processing and other resources. We develop an XML application capable of describing visualization at the three levels. To complement this, we have implemented an extension to a popular visualization system, IRIS Explorer, which allows modules in a dataflow pipeline to run on a set of grid resources. For computational steering applications, we have developed a library that allows a visualization system front-end to connect to a simulation running remotely on a grid resource. We demonstrate the work in two applications: the dispersion of a pollutant under different wind conditions; and the solution of a challenging numerical problem in elastohydrodynamic lubrication.

/pdf/visualization-in-grid-computing-environments-132glvcbja.pdf

Visualization in Grid Computing Environments

In the past few years, there have been key advances in the three main approaches to the visualization of volumetric data: isosurfacing, slicing and volume rendering, which together make up the field of volume visualization.



In this survey paper we set the scene by describing the fundamental techniques for each of these approaches, using this to motivate the range of advances which have evolved over the past few years.



In isosurfacing, we see how the original marching cubes algorithm has matured, with improvements in robustness, topological consistency, accuracy and performance. In the performance area, we look in detail at pre-processing steps which help identify data which contributes to the particular isosurface required. In slicing too, there are performance gains from identifying active cells quickly.



In volume rendering, we describe the two main approaches of ray casting and projection. Both approaches have evolved technically over the past decade, and the holy grail of real-time volume rendering has arguably been reached.



The aim of this review paper is to pull these developments together in a coherent review of recent advances in volume visualization.

Recent Advances in Volume Visualization

Explores the way in which data visualization systems, in particular modular visualization environments, can be used over the World Wide Web. The conventional approach is for the publisher of the data also to be responsible for creating the visualization, and posting it as an image on the Web. This leaves the viewer in a passive role, with no opportunity to analyse the data in any way. We look at different scenarios that occur as we transfer more responsibility for the creation of the visualization to the viewer, allowing visualization to be used for analysis as well as presentation. We have implemented one particular scenario, where the publisher mounts the raw data on the Web, and the viewer accesses this data through a modular visualization environment-in this case, IRIS Explorer. The visualization system is hosted by the publisher, but its fine control is the responsibility of the viewer. The picture is returned to the viewer as VRML, for exploration via a VRML viewer such as Webspace. We have applied this to air quality data which is posted on the Web hourly: through our system, the viewer selects what data to look at (e.g. species of pollutant, location, time period) and how to look at it-at any time and from anywhere on the Web.

Jason Wood

Papers

Collaborative visualization

Distributed and Collaborative Visualization

Visualization in Grid Computing Environments

Recent Advances in Volume Visualization

Visualization over the World Wide Web and its application to environmental data