Title: Integrated policy-based governance of virtual enterprises and systems

Authors: Sarandis Mitropoulos, Christos Douligeris

Addresses: Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus, 80 Karaoli and Dimitriou Str., Piraeus 185 34, Greece. ' Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus, 80 Karaoli and Dimitriou Str., Piraeus 185 34, Greece

Abstract: System management is a required task for all modern enterprises and organisations. This task must be performed in an efficient and integrated manner. Enterprise computing systems are usually organised into domains for the purpose of enforcing management policies. In this paper, we cope with policy-based governance of virtual enterprises and systems. After providing all the related concepts and definitions for policy-based management, we present a general algorithm for constructing system policy hierarchies. Next, we go inside a policy hierarchy coping with analysis issues such as policy satisfaction, policy refinement and policy conflicts. Then, we depict the functional architecture for a policy hierarchy analysis service, discussing in parallel several architectural and implementation issues of policy-based management. Finally, we provide a set of examples that demonstrate the applicability of the approach.

Keywords: enterprise governance; system management; domain hierarchies; policy hierarchies; virtual enterprises; virtual systems; policy-based management; policy satisfaction; policy refinement; policy conflicts.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASS.2010.034625

International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies, 2010 Vol.3 No.3, pp.326 - 342

Published online: 13 Aug 2010 *

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