Ontology-based process modeling using eTOM and ITIL

With recently accelerated shifting trends from device-oriented to process-oriented service management, large portions of business organizations are now on their way of adopting standards and best-practices such as the eTOM and the ITIL to model and manage their diverse business and operational processes. Although there are various process/workflow definition formalisms to orchestrate these processes mentioned above, the rapid development and emerging demands for process automation and interoperability requires systematic modeling methodology and increased semantic information. To achieve this goal, a comprehensive analysis about two commonly accepted process frameworks - the eTOM and the ITIL - is presented in this paper first. Then, further studies concerning their mapping relationship and integrated application of these two process frameworks are carried out, which forms the basis of our process modeling methodology. We also propose an ontology-based process information model based on the preceding methodology, for the purpose of semantic richness. Finally, a novel and ontology-based business process management architecture is given to provide an application scenario and thus, to demonstrate the correctness and feasibility of the proposal in this paper.