What’s in a Service?: An Ontological Perspective

by Giancarlo Guizzardi – Ontology and Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO), Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), Brazil.

Abstract: The concept of “service” has been characterized in different disciplines and by different authors from various points of view. This variety of characterizations has emerged because although this notion seems intuitive, it is far from trivial, with many interrelated perspectives. Given their importance in Enterprise Computing and Service Science in general, we believe that a clear account of services and service-related concepts is necessary and would serve as a basis for communication, consensus and alignment among approaches and perspectives. In this talk, I will discuss a commitment-based account of the notion of service captured in a core reference ontology called UFO-S. This ontology addresses the commitments established between service providers and customers, and account for how such commitments affect the service lifecycle. I will also demonstrate how UFO-S can serve to harmonize different notions in the literature. Finally, I will discuss how this ontology has been used in the design of an Ontology-Based Pattern Language for the Service Domain (S-OPL).

Brief Bio: Giancarlo Guizzardi has a PhD (with the highest distinction) from the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He currently leads the Ontology and Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO) in Brazil and is an Associate Researcher to the Laboratory of Applied Ontology (LOA), in Trento, Italy. Two well-known results of his laboratory are: the ontologically well- founded version of UML termed OntoUML, which has been adopted by many research, industrial and government institutions worldwide; and the foundational ontology UFO (Unified Foundational Ontology), which has influenced international standardization activities in areas such as Software Engineering and Enterprise Architecture (e.g., the Archimate Standard). He has been active for two decades in the areas of Ontologies, Conceptual Modeling and Enterprise Semantics. Over the years, he has conducted many technology transfer projects in large organizations in sectors such as Telecommunications, Software Engineering, Digital Advertisement, Product Recommendation, Digital Journalism, Complex Media Management, Energy, among others. Moreover, he has authored 182 peer-reviewed publications in the aforementioned areas, which have received more than 10 paper awards. He has also been invited to be a keynote speaker in a number of international scientific events (e.g., ER, BPM, I3CK). Furthermore, he is currently the general chair of the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2016) and is an associate editor of the Applied Ontology journal. Finally, he has also been elected twice as an Executive Council member of the International Association for Ontologies and Applications (IAOA) and is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the same association.