A Framework for Aggregation and Validation of Hierarchical Service Level Agreements

Novel business scenarios such as Business Value Networks and Extended
Enterprizes pose new challenges to enable service value chains across
heterogeneous organizational boundaries. In these business scenarios,
service choreographies result into hierarchical structures of added
value. Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which are contracts between
consumers and providers, guarantee the expected quality of service
(QoS) to different stake holders at various levels in this hierarchy.
So far, the aggregation of SLAs has been treated as a single layer
composition. Therefore, we address the strong requirement of describing,
modeling and maintaining this hierarchical SLA aggregation associated
with service value chains. In this paper we propose a framework to
enable hierarchical SLA choreography, aggregation, and validation
for business value networks.