Model-based analysis

Research opportunities

IT outsourcing may seem like a straightforward way to cut costs and improve efficiencies. However, as organizations contract out everything from data center operations to networking to help desk support, they're finding that designing and managing these and other services can be incredibly complicated.

The consequences of failures can be high -- angry customers, missed deadlines, out-of-control projects and even financial penalties for missed performance targets. Given the growing reliance on services, it is crucial that businesses, governments and other large organizations learn how to specify and manage the highly complicated systems that services represent.

Our approach

For the past several years, HP Labs has been applying mathematical models and scenario planning to produce better IT service contracts -- working in partnership with our outsourcing services business during the pursuit phase on many large deals.

We believe this work can be extended to bring an organized, scientific approach to the problems associated with services. We propose using a systems engineering approach to service specification, design, implementation and management as the basis to structure research in this field.

Research focus

Current work

Service-level agreement analysis

Our team is working to allow IT engineering to meet the same standards as engineering in fields like civil and mechanical engineering. Just as we know the performance characteristics of an aircraft, a building or a microprocessor before it is built, we should have a similar understanding of IT systems.

We advocate a formal, model-based approach to designing systems so we can predict how they will behave under a wide range of circumstances. Without analytical models, and the ability to answer 'what if' questions, enterprises are forced to experience the results of such situations on real systems, with sometimes disastrous results.

We've applied this work to designing meaningful service-level agreements (SLAs). SLAs are used to establish the interface between customers and service vendors that determine both the service remuneration levels during the contract's lifetime and the provisioning cost.

We developed a capability called Open Analytics to address the shortcomings of the existing SLA design process. Open Analytics integrates input from all stakeholders in a project and uses mathematical modeling techniques to create a clear picture of what the system will do, and what the values and costs of those functions will be. These tools help organizations understand the relationships between system performance levels, system capacity, flexibility and cost.

Trust economics

We are applying a similar approach to an area we call 'trust' economics. Initially focused on developing meaningful security SLAs, we are aiming to develop tools and approaches that help measure IT security’s true value and cost.

Services sciences

HP is a founding member of the Centre for Systems and Services Sciences, a multi-institution initiative that is developing and integrating the sciences that underpin the successful analysis, design and control of complex systems characterized by services requirements.

The grand challenge of this effort is to establish attainable expectations that services systems will function to specification, at predicted costs and over their intended lifetimes.

Technical contributions

HP has used Open Analytics to craft IT services contracts for more than a dozen projects in the past several years.

Related research

Learn more