A framework for analyzing and organizing complex systems

The paper discusses a framework and technologies enabling the quantitative analysis, organization and optimization of large-scale, globally distributed enterprise and e-services systems. The goal is to organize complex systems in such ways that traffic can be better explained, predicted and controlled at application and service layers rather than at the network layers. Our work approaches higher system perspectives where architectural decisions are made about the overall organization of work and task flows, the global placement of data and applications, etc. Those decisions are significant for the traffic induced in the system later on. Little support is provided today for designing and evaluating large-scale systems from these perspectives, primarily caused by the difficulties in developing realistic computerized models reflecting the dynamic behavior of services and applications. We reduce complex environments to uniform representations of resource demands and capacities and use them to improve the overall system organization. Case studies with earlier versions of our approach have been carried out with two corporate partners, which are discussed at the end.