This Seminar

For this seminar, we address the touch point between the business ecosystem and the technical platform by approaching the boundary objects (e.g. APIs) that connects them from two directions (see below):

• Hamdy from Chalmers will discuss technical consideration when migrating from a monolithic platform to a micro-service oriented one—a change that is required to expose flexible APIs which is one important part of a platforms boundary objects;
• Amir from Combitech will discuss business considerations in designing a platform ecosystem and implications on the boundary objects.

There will be time for questions, comments and discussions that will help shape the TrAF-Cloud project’s direction for the 18 months that remain. All input is welcome!

Migration to micro-service architectures

Hamdy Michael Ayas, Chalmers

Migrations towards cloud-based Service-Oriented-Architectures, like micro-services, are challenging and resource-demanding projects with many decisions that need to be made in a multitude of dimensions. The decision-making processes of organizations during such migrations reveal many details on these dimensions. Existing research tends to focus either on technical issues and decisions (e.g., how to split services), or on the business models of a formed strategy. The equally important interplay of organizational or business issues and their relations with technical aspects often remain out of scope or on a high level of abstraction.

Our study provides an initial theory of decision-making in migrations to micro-services, and outfits practitioners with a roadmap of which decisions they should be prepared to make, and at which point in the migration. We holistically chart the decision-making that happens on all dimensions of a migration project towards micro-services. 3 decision-making processes are identified, consisting of 22 decision-points in total, with their typical alternatives or options. We investigated 16 migration cases, by conducting a grounded theory interview study with 19 participants that recently underwent a migration. We also provide an initial validation via a Web-based survey with 52 respondents.

Ecosystem Maturity Roadmap

Amir Zadeh, Combitech

In this part of the online Seminar, Combitech will present the latest report to TrAF-Cloud project with the focus on Platform Ecosystem. In this part of the seminar, Amir Zadeh will present the Ecosystem Maturity Roadmap in addition to suggested tools and methods. In contribution to WP4, Combitech will present the business strategies and design strategies in shaping a platform ecosystem.

The TrAF-Cloud project at a glance

Trucks today are already connected to the cloud, but functionality that utilizes cloud services are often isolated and implemented ad-hoc. Future trucks are expected to integrate seamlessly with off-board functionality to truly become an integral part of the larger traffic system—not only to enable shorter software update loops to respond to new environmental circumstances, but also to allow seamless deployment of functionality on-board where latency is low, or off-board where unlimited computational power is available.

To meet these expectations, the TrAF-Cloud project explores how to harmonize on- and off-board architectural design principles—to safely and securely blur the border between embedded systems and cloud service.

Concretely, the TrAF-Cloud project focuses on the need to: fundamentally change the signal- and ECU-based onboard vehicle architecture; exploring approaches to bridge on- and off-board platforms for seamless deployment; identify on- and off-board abstraction layers, and; to define useful and flexible APIs to promote modularity and reduce the dependence on specific implementations.