Semantic-ontological combination of Business Rules and Business Processes in IT Service Management

TL;DR

This paper explores integrating semantics and ontologies into IT Service Management to enhance transparency and profitability, focusing on complex service relationships and SBVR-based rules for improved automation.

Contribution

It introduces an ontological approach to representing complex service relationships and demonstrates how SBVR rules can be implemented as executable SQL triggers in ITSM.

Findings

Ontological expression of service relationships improves transparency.

SBVR rules can be effectively implemented as SQL triggers.

The approach facilitates further research in semantic ITSM applications.

Abstract

IT Service Management deals with managing a broad range of items related to complex system environments. As there is both, a close connection to business interests and IT infrastructure, the application of semantic expressions which are seamlessly integrated within applications for managing ITSM environments, can help to improve transparency and profitability. This paper focuses on the challenges regarding the integration of semantics and ontologies within ITSM environments. It will describe the paradigm of relationships and inheritance within complex service trees and will present an approach of ontologically expressing them. Furthermore, the application of SBVR-based rules as executable SQL triggers will be discussed. Finally, the broad range of topics for further research, derived from the findings, will be presented.