Research

Main research areas: Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architectures, Adaptive Process-aware Information Systems, Green IS

Information Logistics in Fog Computing environments

The research concerns how to improve data management in Fog environments where both Cloud and Edge resources are involved. This research wants to extend typical patterns which usually implies data movement from the Edge (where data are produced) to the Cloud (where data are processed), to a scenario in which both data and task movement is allowed from the Edge to the Cloud and the vice-versa to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of data-intensive applications.
This implies the definition of data movement strategies to decide where, when, and how to store data — on the Cloud or on the Edge of the network — and where, when, and how to execute the tasks composing the application, to create a synergy between traditional and cloud approaches able to find a good balance between reliability, security, sustainability, and cost.

  • Link to the publisher siteM. Cantarutti, P. Plebani, M. Salnitri, Fast Replica of Polyglot Persistence in Microservice Architectures for Fog Computing, accepted for publication in Proceedings of Int’l Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC), Springer, 2020
  • Link to the publisher siteE. Fadda, M. Vitali, P. Plebani. Monitoring-aware Optimal Deployment for Applications based on Microservices. Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, IEEE.
  • download paperD. Bermbach, F. Pallas, D. Garcıa Pérez, P. Plebani, M. Anderson, R. Kat, S. Tai, A Research Perspective on Fog Computing, in ICSOC-ISYCC Workshop post-proceedings (to appear), Springer, 2017
  • download paperP. Plebani, D. Garcia-Perez, M. Anderson, D. Bermbach, C. Cappiello, Ronen I. Kat, F. Pallas, B. Pernici, S. Tai, and M. Vitali. Information Logistics and Fog Computing: The DITAS Approach. In Proceedings of the Forum and Doctoral Consortium Papers Presented at the 29th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE 2017, Essen, Germany, June 12-16, 2017, pages 129–136. CEUR Vol-1848.
  • Link to the publisher site download paper F. D’Andria, D. Field, A. Kopaneli, G. Kousiouris, D. Garcia-Perez, B. Pernici, and P. Plebani, Data Movement in the Internet of Things domain, in Proc. of the Fourth European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing (ESOCC), September 2015.
  • DITAS project EU Horizon 2020 funded project

IoT-based/Blockchain-enabled multi-party business process design and monitoring

Business Processes are more and more exploiting Smart Objects to perform their tasks. This research envisions the adoption of Smart Objects to design reliable business processes and to assess their correct execution. Instead of using control-flow based languages to express the processes, declarative-based approaches like GSM (Guard Stage Milestone) and CMMN (Case Management Modeling Notation) are used. Recently, blockchains and DLTs have been studied to understand their role in making the monitoring more transparent

    • Link to the publisher siteC. Di Ciccio, G. Meroni, P. Plebani, Business Process Monitoring on Blockchains: Potentials and Challenges, in Proceedings of BPMDS 2020 Proceedings @ CAiSE 2020, LNBIP 387, Springer, Cham.
    • Link to the publisher siteG. Meroni, L. Baresi, M. Montali, P. Plebani. Multi-party Business Process Compliance Monitoring through IoT-enabled Artifacts. In Information Systems, vol. 73, pp. 61-78 Elsevier, March 2018
    • Link to the publisher siteP. Plebani, A. Marrella, M. Mecella, M. Mizmizi, and B. Pernici. Multi-party Business Process Resilience By-Design: A Data-Centric Perspective. In Advanced Information Systems Engineering – 29th International Conference, CAiSE 2017, Essen, Germany, June 12-16, 2017, Proceedings, pages 110–124, 2017.  (Best paper award)
    • Link to the publisher siteM. Montali and P. Plebani. IoT-based Compliance Checking of Multi-party Business Processes modeled with Commitments, Proc. of ESOCC 2017, Oslo, Norway, September 2017, Springer, 2017

Adaptive Service Oriented Architectures

Service-based applications (SBAs) are built upon  architectures where distributed capabilities may be under the control of different ownership domains, i.e., the Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). This research aims to support the design and execution of SBAs able to react in case of unavailability (e.g., due to a failure of the computing nodes or the network).  Enhanced Service Registry (URBE, Uddi Registry By Example) and  model for expressing quality of service properties in multi-channel systems have been proposed. More recently, an approach to improve the monitorability of multi-cloud SBAs has been proposed.

For more information on the achievements in this topic:

  • Link to the publisher siteE. Fadda, P. Plebani, M. Vitali, Optimizing Monitorability of Multi-cloud Applications, in Proceedings of CAiSE 2016, LNCS 9694, Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 2016, pp. 411-426.
  • Link to the publisher site download paper L. Baresi, M. Miraz, P. Plebani, A Distributed Architecture for Efficient Web Service Discovery, Journal on Service Oriented Computing and Applications, 10(1), pp.: 1-17, Springer, 2016.
  • Link to the publisher site download paper P. Plebani, B. Pernici, “URBE: Web service Retrieval based on Similarity Evaluation”, IEEE Transaction on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 21(11): 1629-1642 (2009)
  • Link to the publisher site download paper D. Ardagna, M. Comuzzi, E. Mussi, B. Pernici, and P. Plebani. PAWS: a framework for processes with adaptive web services, IEEE Software 24(6), pp. 39-46.
  • Link to the publisher site download paper prezi_logo_vertical_color_png V. Andrikopoulos, P. Plebani, Retrieving Compatible Web Services, in Proceedings of Int’l Conference on Web Services (ICWS), Washington DC, USA, July 4-9, 2011.

Sustainable Information Systems

To reduce the energy consumed during the execution cloud-based applications, proper application design methods and a support during the execution are required. To deal with this issue, the research proposes methods that, while enacting the right adaptation strategy for a given context, allow the improvement of the trade off between QoS and CO2 emission reduction for cloud-based applications.

  • Link to the publisher site download paper C. Cappiello, T. T. N. Ho, B. Pernici, P. Plebani, M. Vitali, CO2-aware Adaptation Strategies for Cloud Applications, in IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 152-165, April-June 2016.
  • Link to the publisher site U. Wajid, C. Cappiello, P. Plebani, B. Pernici, N. Mehandjiev, M. Vitali, M. Gienger, K. Kavoussanakis, D. Margery, D. Garcia-Perez, P. Sampaio, On Achieving Energy Efficiency and Reducing CO2 Footprint in Cloud Computing,in IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 138-151, April-June 1 2016.
  • Link to the publisher site download paper C. Cappiello, T. T. N. Ho, B. Pernici, P. Plebani, M. Vitali, CO2-aware Adaptation Strategies for Cloud Applications, to appear on IEEE Transaction on Cloud Computing (in press).
  • Link to the publisher site U. Wajid, C. Cappiello, P. Plebani, B. Pernici, N. Mehandjiev, M. Vitali, M. Gienger, K. Kavoussanakis, D. Margery, D. Garcia-Perez, P. Sampaio, On Achieving Energy Efficiency and Reducing CO2 Footprint in Cloud Computing, to appear on IEEE Transaction on Cloud Computing (in press).
  • Link to the publisher site download paper Cappiello, C.; Plebani, P.; Vitali, M., “Energy-Aware Process Design Optimization,” Cloud and Green Computing (CGC), 2013 Third International Conference on, pp.451,458, Sept. 30 2013-Oct. 2 2013.

For a complete list of papers published on these topics and other topics, please refer to the publications page