Displaying items by tag: big data

LieberLieber Software: From Data Streams to Models

After completing its first project with a Christian Doppler Laboratory (CDL) at the end of 2016, LieberLieber is now continuing this commitment. Together they seek ways to transform live data streams directly into models within the framework of industry 4.0.

The team of CDL-MINT: Polina Patsuk-Bösch, Serap Kadam, Petr Novak, Manuel Wimmer, Alexandra Mazak, Radek Šindelár (f.l.t.r.)

After gaining valuable experience in the handling of machine languages found in widespread use in industry applications during an initial cooperation, LieberLieber is making new strides with the new "CDL for Model-Integrated Intelligent Production" (CDL-MINT). "In industry 4.0 scenarios, huge amounts of data are constantly being collected and then subsequently evaluated and implemented for the further optimization of production processes. As an industrial partner, LieberLieber has a great deal of experience in dealing with such data streams and so we are now jointly taking the step of generating models from this continuously-occurring data," explains Prof. Manuel Wimmer from the Business Informatics Group at the Institute for Software Engineering and Interactive Systems at TU Wien, who also manages the new CD lab. Peter Lieber, founder and owner of LieberLieber: "In our customer projects, such as at Vattenfall, RWE, Bosch, BMW and VW, we see on a daily basis how projects in software and systems development are becoming increasingly complex and data-intensive. This is also a major challenge for powerful modeling platforms such as Enterprise Architect, which we now want to solve together. Model-based development is therefore increasingly at the center of industry 4.0 solutions since it helps to handle the complexity and manage the flow of data in an ordered fashion."

CDL-MINT was established with the support of the Federal Ministry for Science, Research and Business (BMWFW) as well as the two industrial partners CertiCon and LieberLieber, and opened on May 22nd, 2017.

Data, languages and storage

As in the first CDL project, the handling of special machine languages - this time in connection with the operational data - is an important part of the development work. "Since this project is the first time that a reactive model has been generated from the live data streams, the models must understand the languages in which these data are transmitted. If we can do this, then the deployment possibilities of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect would expand considerably," Wimmer explains. In this case, the models could be used to monitor the systems, to understand complex system behavior or to validate model assumptions through empirical data.

Industry 4.0 scenarios are based on the comprehensive exchange of information between all suppliers, customers and manufacturers involved in the production process. Model-based system development solves the challenge of the resulting data streams by using a central model memory. However, the relational database used by Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect encounters its limits with increasing amounts of data. "For a while now, we have been dealing with the issue of how to achieve more efficient storage and retrieval of large volumes of model data. In this collaboration we wish to further extend our know-how and also develop other database concepts, such as NoSQL and graphical or card-based databases," says Lieber. The question of optimized loading and buffering mechanisms for very large models is also addressed.

LieberLieber believes that Sparx Systems has made the next step of becoming the scalable modelling plattform through its engagement in Pro Cloud technology and LieberLieber is keen to colloborate with Sparx Systems on this topic.

Advancements built on solid experience

LieberLieber has already gained extensive experience in the industry 4.0 environment through its "Embedded Engineer" tool. The resulting technologies are a great starting point for the desired model-based monitoring and data collection. "The collaboration with CDL-MINT is based on our experience and will test concepts, technologies and platforms in order to enhance our know-how in industry 4.0 projects. We are deliberately pursuing high goals in order to show everyone that model-based software and systems development is an excellent approach for the rapid implementation of industrial 4.0 projects," concludes Lieber.

Peter Lieber at the CDL-MINT opening speech (May 22nd, 2017)

https://cdl-mint.big.tuwien.ac.at/

TU Wien press release: https://www.tuwien.ac.at/aktuelles/news_detail/article/124989/

About Christian Doppler Laboratories
Christian Doppler Laboratories carry out high-level application-oriented basic research, and is an environment wherein outstanding scientists cooperate with innovative companies. Its excellence in promoting such cooperation has placed the Christian Doppler Research Association in high international regard as a best-practice example. Christian Doppler laboratories are financed jointly by the public authorities and the participating companies. The most important public funding agency is the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Business (BMWFW).

About LieberLieber Software

LieberLieber Software  is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, with offices in Germany, Slovakia and the USA. LieberLieber operates within a variety of industries in the field of model-based software engineering, offering specialized products and services to users of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other well-known UML/SysML software modeling tools.

LieberLieber represents a single source of competence for model-based software development and systems engineering, with years of experience in consulting, scope analysis, creation of individualized solutions, tool chain integration, specialized training and high-level support.

LieberLieber is also well-known for its innovation and advances in the software engineering domain. LieberLieber Embedded Engineer for Enterprise Architect combines automated source-code generation with debugging on the model level and is a veritable revolution in software development. LieberLieber LemonTree is a fresh new model diff & merge tool that boosts productivity in the working environments of distributed development teams while supporting adherence to industry and regulatory standards.

LieberLieber cooperates closely with renowned research institutions and universities to research and create model-based software solutions of the future.

Get more information at www.lieberlieber.com

In an earlier Sparx Systems White Paper the scenario of a jigsaw puzzle was used as a metaphor for agile, flexible and collaborative response to the creation of a shared vision within an environment that is in a state of high flux.  The process of digital transformation will increase the probability of technology failure and change to complex systems will heighten risk exposure. It is essential that organisations mitigate these threats by deploying tools to support the creation of enterprise wide, agile responses. This paper discusses the inter relationship between managing digital transformation, collaborative agile tools and approaches and provides relevant examples of industry responses to digital disruption.

In the puzzle scenario, the mutual dependencies and unpredictability could be analogous to the challenges of digital transformation. Traditional business models will be driven to change by the forces of disruption and current business and IT portfolios will need to meet future demand. The agility with which organisations respond to these changes will be the key factor that governs their future success or their relegation to the beleaguered, whose business models have been made redundant.
 
These forces of digital disruption actually encourage business agility. The scalability afforded by cloud technology for example enables highly flexible service costs. Gartner predicts that “By 2017, 40 percent of utilities with smart metering solutions will use cloud-based big data analytics to address asset-, commodity-, customer- or revenue-related needs.”  In another example the just released “2014 Airlines IT Trends Survey” reveals that “the disruption caused by mobile is so significant that airlines feel that they must invest in mobile services to ensure that they are not left behind.” The survey also reports that “Today, 100% of airlines are investing in the mobile space.”  In the retail industry social media on mobile phones is creating a constant feedback loop that informs the development of business agility. As it permits real-time interactions with customers, it also drives growth.  The 17th Annual Global CEO Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, reports that technology is already having a far-reaching impact on healthcare delivery and CEOs are already planning ways to take advantage of this trend.  89% plan to improve their ability to innovate; 93% plan to change their technology investments; and 95% are exploring better ways of using and managing big data.

Across industry, successful business evolution over the next decade will be based on the extent to which organisations can harness the forces of disruption and become the disrupting force.  Organisational risk profiles will be changed by these forces and the new profiles will inform strategy and decision making. To translate business vision and digital strategy into effective enterprise change will require that leaders possess the ability to visualise, simulate and optimise the target state and ensure that the activities of everyone in the business are co-ordinated.

A systematic approach to the management of change provides an inclusive framework that considers the whole enterprise as well as the needs of different stakeholders. This agile business approach ensures that during the change process lifecycle, priorities are regularly assessed and progress continually monitored.  As requirements are identified adjustments are made by managers and their teams, and not left to the end.

Data visualisation enables insights that support faster and more effective decision making while improving communication and bridging the IT – Business divide. To enable agility and insight to support decision making, organisations must also address silos in legacy systems, business, and information. 

Enterprise Architect is and remains a technology that is fit for purpose in meeting the challenges of the changing business and IT environment. Visually powerful, it provides a fantastic viewpoint of multiple technologies and organizational units, all working together. Team review, shared data models and model mail are all in-built tools that can improve communication and break down silos, because everyone is using the same data/info/model.

To more effectively manage growing complexity and to stay focused and in control, agile and traditional teams choose Enterprise Architect.  Due to very competitive total cost of ownership, large and distributed teams can collaborate more effectively and increase speed and ease, in the design, build, and management of their solutions and processes. 

The industry tested traceability features of Enterprise Architect speak directly to shared awareness and clarity on what has been previously achieved.  According to Gartner, “An agile, multidimensional approach to architecture is absolutely essential to support continuous development and innovation. Give developers the tools to fail fast, iterate quickly and innovate for business transformation.”  The Kanban burndown charts that have been added to Enterprise Architect help to bring project reality into clear focus by showing the work done against the timeline, decision impacts and eliminate fuzziness about time based goals and deadlines.

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect combines Agile projects with non Agile projects in a single projects portfolio, eliminating the necessity for any additional tools. For further information on tools for digital transformation and the creation of a shared vision within an environment that is in a state of high flux go to:

http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/products/ea/11/

As the impact from the digital industrial economy takes effect, it will drive the need for enterprise architects to digitally renew the business. In a connected world, there is no place for silos, and the extent of connectivity determines levels of inclusion in the digital economy, the quality of service/product and resulting customer loyalty.

Sparx Systems supports those enterprise architects who are navigating business enterprise and facilitating digital business renewal, through rapid and unprecedented change.

Optimised service networks encourage closer consumer relationships, which in turn promote improved business relationships, while providing value added competitive barriers. Service differentiation will come from those organisations that succeed in integrating digital technologies to deliver consumers a unique and ongoing experience.

To ensure maximum customer retention and growth, utilities and telecommunications rely heavily on geospatial information systems, mobile workforce applications and communications management, for the construction, operation, maintenance and management of critical network systems.

In 1999 the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) identified electrification as the first of the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century and the Smartgrid - which is driving modernisation of the electricity grid - became federal policy, with the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007

The adoption of smart metering capabilities and the creation of new grid infrastructures are extending transmission and distribution systems in ways, which until recently, were not considered in the realm of the possible. Enterprise Architect is used to maintain the Common Information Model (CIM) - Read More Here

But, now this extension is connecting new or previously siloed networks, in an interoperable, communications model. This Smartgrid is a subset of a global tissue of smart connected devices called the Internet of Things (IoT). See http://www.iot-a.eu/public

The ability to automatically transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction is a scenario that suggests an explosion of connections. Providing unique identifiers with such capability, to objects, animals and people will push the installed base of connected things to 212 billion by 2020 according to IDC.

While the functionality of the Internet is based on open and interoperable standards, enabling interoperability and global accessibility the Internet of Things is for most part, a heterogeneous world of silos where standards for scalability, governance and security are yet to be developed.

The explosion of the Internet of Things will contribute to the generation of data volumes, which combined with other sources is referred to as Big Data and which threaten to outstrip our ability to deal with it while sowing new data silos. Without support from collaborative technologies that support highly automated processes, the time required make this data re-usable is impractical.

According to a 2012 Whitepaper by Oracle, An Architects Guide to Big Data, architects are expected to provide a fast, reliable path to business adoption while embracing new technologies and techniques are always challenging. These technologies and techniques should then be deployed to “share knowledge, establish standards, and to manage best practices”.

At a time when the resource “bandwidth” of the enterprise architect is being squeezed under the pressure of tasks and responsibilities, the pressure can be reduced through collaboration – the positive difference between the sum of the parts and the whole!

An affordable shared platform, supporting a highly scaleable, networked collaboration solution, is necessary. With the recent release of Enterprise Architect 11 Sparx Systems has provided several features to address this issue. The Cloud Service, Reusable Asset Service (RAS) and OSLC are a trinity of tools, which when used together, provide a powerful solution.

The Sparx Systems Cloud Services application provides a convenient mechanism for hosting data models while providing easy access to all team members, external customers and consultants, anywhere around the world.

The implementation of the RAS standard within Enterprise Architect provides a shared remote registry, accessible via a Cloud Service connection that will allow organizations to securely share information between one another in a standardised environment. Users can view the information in a single, consolidated virtual registry-repository, while retaining local control over their own registry-repositories, while modellers can easily and conveniently distribute or download data resources including reusable model structures, information, corporate directives or standards. http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/products/ea/cloud-trial.html

Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC), makes it easier for different tools to work together and users can Create, Read, Update and Delete model information such as requirements. A video can be accessed here http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/products/ea/11/index.html

Sparx Systems has partnered with CSIRO to support the ongoing development of model registry features and functionality for Sparx's Enterprise Architect UML modelling tool. http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/press/articles/CSIRO-Collaboration.html

The success of business models lies in their agility, the extent to which they adapt to changing market conditions and how they maintain efficiency and competitiveness in international supply chains. Today markets are changing at an unprecedented pace, driven by mobile, social, cloud and data technology. 

IDC states that “by 2020, a third of the data in the digital universe (more than 13,000 exabytes) will have Big Data value, but only if it is tagged and analysed”

In an ideal world, large enterprises want to be able to respond to market change, with the speed of smaller competitors. This agility lies in the organisational ability, to create innovation cycles at the technology, people and process levels- the development of new applications based on insights crystallised, from the effective collection, management and analysis of data.  These cycles have the potential to continually drive, innovation and solutions.

An Enterprise Data Architecture identifies the strategic data requirements and the related components of the information management solution at the enterprise level, and supports the ability to leverage data into business intelligence.
Such architecture informs organisation strategy and provides a formal approach to creating and managing the flow of data and data processing across IT systems and applications. This includes defining objectives for the improvement of data collection and use, process improvement, effective decision making on new and modified solutions, data warehousing, integration and reporting initiatives.

The dollars are in the detail when it comes to data management practice. If organisations are to reap this value, they will need to enable data synthesis on a shared, intra-organisation basis, and for this, modelling of data assets is imperative. Enterprise Architect has a built in data modelling profile and further information can be found here http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/enterprise-architect/information-data-modeling/information-data-modeling.html

Gartner recommends that “enterprises should adopt a portfolio of data integration tools that support a range of data delivery styles” including “federated and virtualized views of data.” It is recommended to take into account both existing data integration processes and future needs relative to a range of use-cases including data warehousing, operational application integration, system migrations and data conversions, and intra-enterprise data sharing.

The Big Data Survey http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2593815 conducted by Gartner in 2013 reveals that “64 Percent of organizations have invested or plan to invest in Big Data in 2013”.