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IEEE Computer Society Magazine Editors in Chief
Computer IEEE Intelligent Systems IEEE Pervasive Computing

Jeff Voas, NIST V.S. Subrahmanian, Dartmouth Marc Langheinrich, Università
College della Svizzera italiana
Computing in Science &
Engineering IEEE Internet Computing IEEE Security & Privacy
Lorena A. Barba (Interim), George Pallis, University David Nicol, University of Illinois
George Washington University of Cyprus at Urbana-Champaign
IEEE Annals of the History IEEE Micro IEEE Software

of Computing Lizy Kurian John, University Ipek Ozkaya, Software
Gerardo Con Diaz, University of of Texas at Austin Engineering Institute
California, Davis
IEEE MultiMedia IT Professional
IEEE Computer Graphics Shu-Ching Chen, Florida Irena Bojanova, NIST
and Applications International University
Torsten Möller, Universität Wien
www.computer.org/computingedge 1
JANUARY 2020 • VOLUME 6, NUMBER 1
From Geographic
From Dealing With One Collocation
Domain at a Time
To Worldwide
Distribution
THEME HERE
RE
To Dealing With
Everywhere
Multiple Domains
From Wishing for
Experienced End
Cross- RE With Users
Domain RE Everyone To Empowering
Newbies
27 36 41
Ubiquitous
RE
From Focusing on
From Wishing for Software
Well-Understood
To Holistically Taking
Processes RE for
Open RE Into Consideration
Everything
To Accepting People, Things, and
Openness Services
Automated
Cryptocurrencies:
Legend:
Gray Rectangles: Barriers
Ubiquitous
RE From Direct Interaction With
Representative End Users
The IoT
Transparency Requirements
Colored Boxes: Required Transformations
Circles: Dimensions of Ubiquity
To Indirect Interaction With a
Crowd and Digital
versus Privacy Engineering: A Transformation:
Paradigm Shift that Toward the Data-
Affects Everyone Driven Enterprise
Blockchain
8 On the Origins and Variations of Blockchain
Technologies
ALAN T. SHERMAN, FARID JAVANI, HAIBIN ZHANG, AND ENIS
GOLASZEWSKI
15 BLOCKCHAIN
GEORGE STRAWN
Cryptocurrency
18 A Service-Oriented Perspective on Blockchain
Smart Contracts
FLORIAN DANIEL AND LUCA GUIDA
27 Cryptocurrencies: Transparency versus Privacy

NIR KSHETRI
Digital Transformation
31 Skills and Competencies for Digital Transformation
STEPHEN J. ANDRIOLE
36 Ubiquitous Requirements Engineering: A Paradigm

Shift that Affects Everyone
KARINA VILLELA, EDUARD C. GROEN, AND JOERG DOERR
Internet of Things
41 The IoT and Digital Transformation: Toward the
Data-Driven Enterprise
ALEXANDER A. PFLAUM AND PHILIPP GOLZER
46 Extending Patient-Chatbot Experience with Internet

of Things and Background Knowledge: Case
Studies with Healthcare Applications
AMIT SHETH, HONG YUNG YIP, AND SAEEDEH SHEKARPOUR
46
Departments
4 Magazine Roundup
7 Editor’s Note: Blockchain to the Rescue
72 Conference Calendar
Extending
Patient-Chatbot
Experience with
Internet of Things
and Background Subscribe to ComputingEdge for free at
Knowledge www.computer.org/computingedge.
CS FOCUS
Magazine
Roundup
of this article from the Septem-

ber/October 2019 issue of Com-
puting in Science & Engineering
eliminate the speed-limiting
charge iteration in MD with
a novel extended-Lagrangian
scheme. The extended-Lagrang-
ian reactive MD (XRMD) code
T
drastically improves energy con-
he IEEE Computer furry friends. The authors of this servation while substantially
Society’s lineup of 12 article from the September 2019 reducing time-to-solution. Fur-
peer-reviewed tech- issue of Computer report on an thermore, the authors introduce
nical magazines covers cut- empirical study investigating a new polarizable charge equili-
ting-edge topics ranging from the user perceptions of a popu- bration (PQEq) model to accu-
software design and computer lar dog activity tracker. Results rately predict atomic charges and
graphics to Internet comput- show that these trackers have a polarization.
ing and security, from scien- positive impact on owners’ moti-
tific applications and machine vation to increase their physical IEEE Annals of the
intelligence to visualization activities with their dogs. History of Computing
and microchip design. Here are
highlights from recent issues. Computing in Science & Founding and Growing
Engineering Adobe Systems, Inc.
Computer Founded in 1982, Adobe Sys-
Scalable Reactive tems heralded several of the
Log My Dog: Perceived Molecular Dynamics technological innovations nec-
Impact of Dog Activity Simulations for essary to precipitate the emer-
Tracking Computational Synthesis gence of desktop publishing as
The pet industry is catching up Reactive molecular dynamics well as many features of modern
in the wearables market, and (MD) simulation is a power- office computing, digital media,
pet activity and location track- ful research tool for describing and graphic arts. In this article
ers are increasingly worn by our chemical reactions. The authors from the July–September 2019
4 January 2020 Published by the IEEE Computer Society 2469-7087/20 © 2020 IEEE
issue of IEEE Annals of the His- to tune two algorithms for char- posing significant complications
tory of Computing, Adobe found- acterizing satellite detections of for system and algorithm design.
ers Charles Geschke and John wildfires. In this article from the May/June
Warnock cover their professional 2019 issue of IEEE Internet Com-
history, the conception of Adobe IEEE Intelligent Systems puting, the authors present a
Systems, and its growth. They also dynamic global manager selection
explain the technology behind the Using Social Media to Detect algorithm to minimize energy con-
advances in computer printing, Socio-Economic Disaster sumption cost by fully exploiting
electronic file transfer, and digital Recovery the system diversities in geogra-
art and photography. Adobe, its There has been growing interest phy and variation over time. The
products, and its engineers played in harnessing artificial intelligence algorithm makes real-time deci-
a key role in these developments, (AI) to improve situational aware- sions based on measurable system
which enabled desktop publishing ness for disaster management. parameters through stochastic opti-
and the publishing revolution. As a first step toward investigat- mization methods, while achiev-
ing the possibility of developing ing performance balance between
IEEE Computer Graphics an AI-based method for detecting energy cost and latency. Extensive
and Applications socio-economic recovery, this arti- trace-driven simulations verify the
cle from the May/June 2019 issue effectiveness and efficiency of the
Uncertainty-Aware of IEEE Intelligent Systems stud- proposed algorithm. The authors
Visualization for Analyzing ies the correlations between pub- also highlight several potential
Heterogeneous Wildfire lic sentiment on social media and research directions that remain
Detections socio-economic recovery activi- open and require future elabora-
There is growing interest in using ties as reflected in market data. tions in analyzing geo-distributed
data science techniques to charac- The result shows multiple correla- big data.
terize and predict natural disasters tions between sentiment on social
and extreme weather events. Such media and the socio-economic IEEE Micro
techniques merge noisy data gath- recovery activities involved in
ered in the real world, from sources restarting daily routines. Conven- Accelerating Image-Sensor-
such as satellite detections, with tional socio-economic recovery Based Deep-Learning
algorithms that strongly depend indicators, such as governmental Applications
on the noise, resolution, and uncer- statistical data, have a significant In this article from the September/
tainty in these data. In this article time lag before publishing. Using October 2019 issue of IEEE Micro,
from the September/October 2019 public sentiment on social media the authors review two inference
issue of IEEE Computer Graph- instead can improve situational accelerators that exploit value
ics and Applications, the authors awareness in recovery operations. properties in deep neural networks
present a visualization approach (DNNs): Diffy and Tactical. Diffy
for interpolating multiresolution, IEEE Internet Computing targets spatially correlated acti-
uncertain satellite detections of vations in computational imag-
wildfires into intuitive visual rep- Energy-Efficient Analytics for ing DNNs. Tactical targets sparse
resentations. They use extrinsic, Geographically Distributed neural networks using a low-over-
intrinsic, coincident, and adja- Big Data head hardware/software weight-
cent uncertainty representations Big data analytics on geographi- skipping front-end. The authors
as appropriate for understand- cally distributed datasets (across combine these accelerators into Di-
ing the information at each stage. data centers or clusters) has been Tactical to boost benefits for both
To demonstrate their approach, attracting increased interest in scene understanding workloads
the authors use their framework both academia and industry, and computational imaging tasks.
MAGAZINE ROUNDUP
IEEE MultiMedia authors of this article from the attacks show the risks associated
April–June 2019 issue of IEEE Per- with these new technologies and
A 3D Scene Management vasive Computing describe Eva, a can help us articulate the need for
Method Based on the conversational robot developed to better security practices.
Triangular Mesh for Large- conduct therapeutic interventions
Scale Web3D Scenes for PwD. A previously reported IEEE Software
Real-time rendering of large-scale study conducted with Eva using a
Web3D scenes was difficult to Wizard-of-Oz approach proved that Perceptions of Gender
implement in virtual-reality sys- it successfully engaged PwD with Diversity’s Impact on Mood in
tems and geographic information the sessions. This article reports Software Development Teams
systems (GIS) in the past because improvements to Eva that allow the Gender inequality persists in IT
of the technical constraints in CPU, robot to guide the therapy sessions teams. The authors of this article
memory, and network bandwidth. without human intervention and from the September/October 2019
In this article from the July–Septem- findings from its deployment in a issue of IEEE Software examine
ber 2019 issue of IEEE MultiMedia, a geriatric residence. These improve- how gender composition affects
model management strategy is pro- ments include the automatic gen- the workplace atmosphere. They
posed based on triangular meshes, eration of a therapy script tailored discuss the problem of gender dis-
in which neighborhood buildings to the profile and preferences of the crimination and consider methods
are considered as nodes and con- participants, expectations about to reduce inequality.
nected. Each node in the mesh has the type and length of responses
a set of level-of-detail (LOD) models, by participants to certain queries, IT Professional
including high-, medium-, and low- and strategies to recover from com-
precision models. Besides a model munication breakdowns. A user Toward a Blockchain-Enabled
file, the high-precision LOD of the study with five PwD shows that Crowdsourcing Platform
node can be a subtriangular mesh. when acting in fully autonomous Crowdsourcing has been pursued
The 3D models in a complex scene mode, Eva is as effective in engag- as a way to leverage the power
can be flexibly managed with some ing participants in the therapy as of the crowd for many purposes
nested triangular meshes. Accord- with the Wizard-of-Oz condition, in diverse sectors, including col-
ing to the experimental results, and that communication break- lecting information, aggregating
the proposed method effectively downs are adequately resolved. funds, and gathering employees.
achieves the progressive download- Data integrity and nonrepudiation
ing, dynamic loading, and real-time IEEE Security & Privacy are of utmost importance in these
display for a large-scale 3D scene. systems and are currently not guar-
Its performance is better than the Stealing, Spying, and Abusing: anteed. Blockchain technology has
traditional methods. Consequences of Attacks on been proven to improve on these
Internet of Things Devices aspects. In this article from the
IEEE Pervasive Computing The authors of this article from the September/October 2019 issue of
September/October 2019 issue of IT Professional, the authors investi-
A Conversational Robot IEEE Security & Privacy studied the gate the benefits that the adoption
to Conduct Therapeutic security practices of a diverse set of blockchain technology can bring
Interventions for Dementia of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in crowdsourcing systems. To this
Verbal communication is an essen- with different architectures. They end, they provide examples of real-
tial component of effective non- found vulnerabilities that can be life crowdsourcing use cases and
pharmacological interventions for exploited to launch novel attacks. explore the benefits of using block-
people with dementia (PwD). The The real-world implications of IoT chain, mainly as a database.
6 ComputingEdge January 2020

EDITOR’S NOTE
Blockchain to the Rescue
M any tough problems facing business,

government, and individuals could
be solved through indelible ledgers.
Transparent, secure transaction records could help
improve trust and efficiency in everything from
Transparency versus Privacy” warns that cyber-
criminals are sometimes able to expose the iden-
tity of cryptocurrency users despite pseudonyms
and concealed IP addresses.
Business professionals need to understand a
payments to voting. Enter blockchain-based sys- variety of new technologies—not just blockchain—
tems. This issue of ComputingEdge explores what in order to compete. “Skills and Competencies
makes blockchain such a powerful technology with for Digital Transformation,” from IT Professional,
the potential to transform numerous industries. provides an overview of the high-tech tools that
“On the Origins and Variations of Blockchain companies should consider implementing. IEEE
Technologies,” from IEEE Security & Privacy, pro- Software’s “Ubiquitous Requirements Engineering:
vides a history of blockchain going back to David A Paradigm Shift that Affects Everyone,” describes
Chaum’s 1979 vault system. The authors describe the evolving role of software engineering in digi-
the foundational elements of the technology and tal transformation, particularly in addressing the
compare the properties of diverse blockchain sys- needs of diverse users.
tems. IT Professional’s “BLOCKCHAIN” discusses The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the cru-
the technology’s growing popularity with busi- cial technologies that modern businesses need to
nesses and other organizations. employ. In “The IoT and Digital Transformation:
The first modern blockchain was implemented Toward the Data-Driven Enterprise,” from IEEE Per-
in the cryptocurrency bitcoin, and cryptocur- vasive Computing, the authors propose a process
rency remains the most common application of for companies that want to adopt IoT solutions.
blockchain technology. IEEE Internet Computing’s Healthcare is among the industries that can benefit
“A Service-Oriented Perspective on Blockchain from the IoT, as shown in IEEE Intelligent Systems’
Smart Contracts” examines the underlying tech- “Extending Patient-Chatbot Experience with Inter-
nology used in cryptocurrency platforms like Bit- net of Things and Background Knowledge: Case
coin and Ethereum. Computer’s “Cryptocurrencies: Studies with Healthcare Applications.”
2469-7087/20 © 2020 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society January 2020 7
REAL-WORLD CRYPTO
Editors: Peter Gutmann, pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz | David Naccache, david.naccache@ens.fr | Charles C. Palmer, ccpalmer@us.ibm.com
On the Origins and Variations

of Blockchain Technologies
Alan T. Sherman, Farid Javani, Haibin Zhang, and Enis Golaszewski | University of Maryland, Baltimore County
W e explore the origins of

blockchain technologies
to better understand the enduring
help people understand where
blockchains came from, whether
they are important, and if they will
and controls who may update state
and issue transactions. A private
blockchain is a permissioned block-
needs they address. We identify the persist. (For a complete list of refer- chain controlled by one organiza-
five key elements of a blockchain, ences, see A. Sherman et al.)1 tion. A consortium blockchain is
show the embodiments of these a permissioned blockchain involv-
elements, and examine how these Elements of Blockchains ing a group of organizations. In a
elements come together to yield Blockchains provide a mechanism permissionless blockchain, anyone
important properties in selected through which mutually distrustful may potentially append new blocks,
systems. To facilitate comparing the remote parties (nodes) can reach with the consensus policy (e.g., a
many variations of blockchains, we consensus on the state of a ledger majority of participants) determin-
also describe the four crucial roles of information. To trace the origins ing which continuation is valid.
of common blockchain participants. of these technologies, we start by Blockchains achieve consensus
Our historical exploration highlights identifying their essential elements and control (and, in particular,
the 1979 work of David Chaum, informally. A blockchain is a dis- prevent double spending) in part
whose vault system embodies many tributed ledger comprising blocks through applying protocols and
of the elements of blockchains. (records) of information, includ- establishing high costs (both eco-
ing information about transac- nomic and computational) to modify
Understanding tions between two or more parties. the ledger. Typically, permissioned
Blockchains The blocks are cryptographically systems run faster than permission-
With myriad blockchain distrib- linked to create an immutable led- less systems do because their control
uted ledger systems in existence, ger. Nodes may append informa- and consensus strategies depend on
more than 550 associated pat- tion to the ledger through invoking faster fault-tolerant protocols3 rather
ent applications under review, and transactions. An access policy deter- than on time-consuming crypto-
much associated hype, it can be mines who may read the informa- graphic proofs of work (PoWs), and
difficult to make sense of these tion. A control policy determines they usually involve fewer nodes.
systems, their properties, and how who may participate in the evolu- Gencer et al. show that permission-
they compare. Through exploring tion of the blockchain and how new less blockchains (such as Bitcoin
the origins of these technologies, blocks may potentially be appended and Ethereum) are much more cen-
including David Chaum’s 1979 vault to the blockchain. A consensus policy tralized than many people assume:
system, we provide insights and a determines which state of the block- 20 mining pools control 90% of the
clear and useful way to think about chain is valid, resolving disputes computing power.
blockchains. Our historical perspec- should conflicting possible continu- Some blockchains additionally
tive distills important ideas, identi- ations appear. support the idea of smart contracts,
fies enduring needs, and shows how As explained by Cachin and which execute terms of agreements
changing technologies can satisfy Vukolic,2 a range of control policies between parties, possibly without
those needs. This perspective will is possible, including permissioned, human intervention. These agree-
consortium, private, and permis- ments might be embodied as arbi-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSEC.2019.2893730
sionless blockchains. In a permis- trary computer programs including
Date of publication: 20 March 2019 sioned blockchain, a body identifies conditional statements.
72 January/February 2019 Copublished by the IEEE Computer and Reliability Societies 1540-7993/19©2019IEEE
Embodiments of PoW for both mining and achiev- and private transaction computa-
the Elements ing consensus. tions that protects individual pri-
Although the seminal paper on Bit- PoW aims, in part, to defend vacy through physical security.
coin appeared in 2008 (with the against Sybil attacks, in which adver- The building blocks of this system
mysterious author Satoshi Naka- saries attempt to forge multiple include physically secure vaults,
moto), 4 most of the underlying identities and use those forged iden- existing cryptographic primi-
technological ideas had arisen many tities to influence the consensus pro- tives (symmetric and asymmetric
years earlier. A blockchain is a type cess. With PoW, however, a node’s encryption, cryptographic hash
of distributed database, an idea that influence on the consensus process functions, and digital signatures),
goes back to at least the 1970s (e.g., is proportional to its computational and a new primitive introduced by
Wong11). More generally, the idea of power: forging multiple identities Chaum—threshold secret sharing.8
record keeping goes back millennia, that share the adversary’s given com- Chaum’s 1982 work went largely
including to ancient Mesopotamia. putational power does not help. To unnoticed, apparently because he
Kanare describes proper methods adapt to varying amounts of avail- never made any effort to publish it
for scientific logging, including the able computational resources, PoW in a conference or journal, instead
idea of preserving all transaction systems dynamically throttle the pursuing different approaches to
records, in addition to the history difficulty of the PoW problem to achieving individual privacy.
of any modifications to the collected achieve a certain target rate at which In Chaum’s system, each vault
data—ideas that are found in many the problems are solved. signs, records, and broadcasts each
systems (e.g., Hyperledger Fabric). Permissioned blockchains can be transaction it processes. Chaum
The idea of immutably chaining modeled using the concept of (Byz- states, “Because the aggregate
blocks of information with a cryp- antine fault-tolerant) state machine in cludes COMPRESSED_HIS-
tographic hash function appears replication, a notion proposed in TORY, the [cryptographic] check-
in the 1979 dissertation of Ralph 1978 by Lamport and, later, con- sum is actually ‘chained’ through the
Merkle at Stanford, in which Merkle cisely formalized by Schneider. entire history of consensus states.”9
explains how information can be State machine replication specifies He further says, “Nodes remember
linked in a tree structure now known what are the transactions and in and will provide all messages they
as a Merkle hash tree. A linear chain what order they are processed, even have output—each vault saves all it
is a special case of a tree, and a tree in the presence of (Byzantine) faults has signed, up to some limit, and will
provides a more efficient way of and unreliable communications.3 supply any saved thing on request;
chaining information than does a Thereby, to achieve a strong form only dead vaults can cause loss of
linear chain. Subsequently, in 1990, of transaction consensus, many recently signed things.”9
Haber and Stornetta applied these permissioned systems build on the Chaum’s system embodies a
ideas to time-stamp documents, cre- ideas from the 1998 Paxos protocol mechanism for achieving member-
ating the company Surety in 1994. of Lamport 7 (which deals only ship consistency: “Among other
These prior works, however, do not with crash failures) and from the things, the algorithms must provide a
include other elements and tech- 2002 Practical Byzantine Fault kind of synchronization and agree-
niques of blockchain. Tolerance protocol of Castro and ment among nodes about allowing
To prevent an adversary from Liskov. Nakamoto observed that new nodes into the network, remov-
unduly influencing the consen- the permissionless Bitcoin system ing nodes from the network, and the
sus process, many permissionless realizes Byzantine agreement in status of nodes once in the network.”9
systems require that new blocks open networks. The system also embodies a weak
include a proof of computational Arguably, many of the elements form of transaction consensus, albeit
work. Nakamoto’s paper cites Back’s5 of blockchains are embodied in vaguely described and apparently
2002 effective construction from David Chaum’s 1979 vault system,8 not supporting concurrent client re-
Hashcash. In 1992, Dwork and described in his 1982 dissertation9 quests: “If the output of one partic-
Naor proposed proof of compu- at Berkeley, including detailed ular processor module is used as the
tation to combat junk mail. The specifications. Chaum describes output for the entire vault, the other
idea and a construction underly- the design of a distributed com- processors must be able to compare
ing PoW, however, may be seen in puter system that can be estab- their output to its output, and have
an initial form in 1974 in Merkle’s lished, maintained, and trusted by time to stop the output on its way
puzzles,6 which Merkle proposed mutually suspicious groups. It is a through the isolation devices.”9 The
to implement public-key cryptog- public record-keeping system with consensus algorithm involves major-
raphy. Bitcoin was the first to use group membership consistency ity vote of nodes based on observed
www.computer.org/security 73
REAL-WORLD CRYPTO
signed messages entering and leav- Chaum assumes, essentially, a unique pseudonym which appears
ing vaults. best-effort broadcast model, and he in a roster of acceptable clients.”9
Chaum created his vaults system does not provide mechanisms for To enable private transactions for
before the emergence of the terms achieving consensus with unreli- blockchains, engineers are explor-
permissioned and permissionless able communications—technolo- ing the application of trusted
blockchains, and his system does gies that subsequently have been execution environments, continu-
not neatly fall into either of these developed and applied in modern ing an approach fundamental in
discrete categories. In Chaum’s permissioned systems. Chaum’s Chaum’s vaults.
system, each node identifies itself dissertation does not include the In 1994, Szabo 10 coined the
uniquely by posting a public key, ideas of PoW, dynamic throttling of term smart contract, but the idea of
authenticated by level 2 trustees. work difficulty, and explicit smart systematically applying rules to exe-
For this reason, some people may contracts (though Chaum’s vaults cute the terms of an agreement has
consider Chaum’s system a permis- support arbitrary distributed pri- a long history in trading systems.
sioned blockchain. vate computation). For example, in 1949, with a system
This narrow view, however, dimin- Unlike in most blockchain sys- involving ticker tapes and humans
ishes the fact that each node can be tems, nodes in Chaum’s system hold applying rules, Future, Inc. gener-
authorized in a public ceremony secret values, which necessitates a ated buy and sell orders for com-
independently from any trustee. more complex mechanism for restart- modities. Recently, so-called hybrid
During this ceremony, vaults are ing after failures. Using what Chaum blockchains have emerged, which
assembled from bins of parts, which calls partial keys, any vault can back combine Byzantine fault-tolerant
the public (not necessarily nodes) up its state securely by encrypting state machine replication with
can inspect and test—a procedure it with a key and then escrowing defenses against Sybil attacks—for
that inspired Chaum to coin the this key using what we now call example, PeerCensus, ByzCoin,
more limited phrase cut and choose. threshold secret sharing. After reading Solidus, Hybrid Consensus, Elas-
Regardless of whether one views Chaum’s February 1979 technical tico, OmniLedger, and RapidChain.
some configurations of Chaum’s report8 that describes partial keys, Also, Hyperledger (an umbrella
vaults as permissionless systems, Adi Shamir published an elegant project involving Fabric, a system
the trust bestowed through the alternate method for secret sharing for permissioned blockchains) and
public ceremony creates a system in November 1979. Ethereum (a platform for public
whose trust model is the antithesis Chaum also notes that pseudonyms blockchains) have joined forces.
of that of a private (permissioned) can play an important role in effect- Recently, researchers have applied
blockchain. For these reasons, we ing anonymity: “Another use allows game theory to model and analyze
consider Chaum’s system pub- an individual to correspond with a the behaviors of players and mining
licly permissioned. record keeping organization under a pools in blockchain-based digital
currencies (see Dhamal and Lewen-
berg). Table 1 chronicles some
of the important cryptographic
Table 1. A timeline of selected discoveries in cryptography and blockchain technology. discoveries underlying blockchain
1970 James Ellis, public-key cryptography discovered at Government Communications technologies. For example, in
Headquarters (GCHQ) in secret 2018, the European Patent Office
issued the first patent on block-
1973 Clifford Cocks, RSA cryptosystem discovered at GCHQ in secret
chain—a method for enforcing
1974 Ralph Merkle, cryptographic puzzles (paper published in 1978) smart contracts.
1976 Diffie and Hellman, public-key cryptography discovered at Stanford
1977 Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, RSA cryptosystem invented at the Massachusetts Comparison of Selected
Institute of Technology Blockchain Systems
To illustrate how the elements come
1979 David Chaum, vaults and secret sharing (dissertation in 1982)
together in actual blockchain systems,
1982 Lamport, Shostak, and Pease, Byzantine Generals Problem we compare a few selected systems,
1992 Dwork and Naor, combating junk mail including Chaum’s vaults, Bitcoin,
2002 Adam Bach, Hashcash Dash, Corda, and Hyperledger Fab-
ric, chosen for diversity. Table 2
2008 Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin
describes how each of these sys-
2017 Wright and Savanah, nChain European patent application (issued in 2018) tems carries out the four crucial
74 IEEE Security & Privacy January/February 2019
participant roles of any blockchain that implements policy. Despite ledgers, they will likely be around
defined ahead. For more context, these significant powers, the control in various forms for a long time.
Table 3 characterizes a few important structure is still more distributed There are, however, some trou-
properties of these systems and of (anyone can potentially become a bling fundamental conflicts that
one additional system—Ethereum. core developer) than for a permis- have not been solved. These con-
In his vault system, Chaum 9 sioned system controlled entirely flicts include tensions between
identifies four crucial participant by a prespecified entity. In Bitcoin, the fol low ing pairs of poten-
roles of any blockchain, which in each round, the winning miner (a tially dissonant concerns: privacy
we call watchers, doers, executives, doer) becomes an executive for that and indelibility, anonymity and
and czars. The watchers passively round. It is instructive to understand accountability, stability and alter-
observe and check the state of the how each blockchain system allo- native future continuations, and
ledger. The doers (level 1 trustees) cates the four participant roles. current engineering choices and
carry out actions, including serving Table 3 illustrates some of the long-term security. For example,
state. The executives (level 2 trust- possible variations of blockchains, recent European privacy laws grant
ees) sign (or otherwise attest to) the including varying control and con- individuals the right to demand
blocks. The czars (level 3 trustees) sensus policies as well as different that their personal data be erased
change the executives and their pol- types of smart contracts. Whereas from most repositories (the right
icies. Chaum refers to these partici- most blockchain systems maintain to be forgotten). Satisfying this
pants as bodies,9 leaving it unclear a single chain, Corda supports mul- erasure requirement is highly prob-
whether they could be algorithms. tiple independent chains, per node lematic for indelible blockchains,
Although most systems do not or among subsets of nodes. Similarly, especially for ones whose nodes
explicitly specify these roles, all Chaum’s system also supports mul- lack physical security.
systems embody them, though tiple chains. While most blockchains An attraction of blockchains is
with varying nuances. For example, require each node to maintain the their promise of stability enforced
many people naively think of Bit- same state, Corda’s and Chaum’s sys- through consensus, yet sometimes
coin as a fully distributed system tems do not. the nodes cannot agree, resulting in
free of any centralized control, but, a fork and associated possible splits
in fact, Bitcoin’s core developers— Conflicts and Challenges in the continuations of the chain. In
as is true for all distributed sys- Because blockchain technologies a hard fork, level 3 trustees issue a
tems—carry out the role of czars, address enduring needs for per - significant change in the rules that is
changing the underlying software manent, indelible, and trusted incompatible with the old rules. In a
Table 2. Alignment of participant roles across five blockchain systems.
Chaum, 1982 Bitcoin, 2008 Dash, 2014 Corda, 2016 Hyperledger Fabric,
A flexible A permissionless A system that speeds up A permissioned 2016
system based system using Bitcoin with a masternode system with A permissioned system
Role on vaults PoW network smart contracts with smart contracts
Watchers Any computer Nodes (distinct Any computer online Nodes Peers
Passively check state online9 from full nodes)
Doers Level 1 trustee Full nodes Miners Nodes Peers
Carry out actions,
including serving state
Executives Level 2 trustee Winning miner Winning masternode Nodes (each Endorsing peers
Sign blocks (or (promoted (promoted (promoted by an algorithm node is an
otherwise attest to from level 1 by from doers from the masternode executive for its
them) czars)9 each round) network, which anyone Corda blocks,
may join for 1,000 Dash) called states)
Czars Level 3 Core developers Quorum of masternodes Permissioning Endorsement policies
Change executives and trustee9 service
their policies
www.computer.org/security 75
REAL-WORLD CRYPTO
Table 3. Three properties of several distributed ledger systems. T o understand blockchain sys-
tems, it is helpful to view them
in terms of how the watchers, doers,
System Permissioned? Basis of Consensus Smart Contracts executives, and czars carry out their
functions under the guidance of the
Chaum, Permissioned, Weak consensus; Private arbitrary
1982 with option does not handle distributed access, control, and consensus poli-
for publicly concurrent client computation cies. This systematic abstract view
permissioned requests helps focus attention on crucial ele-
ments and facilitates a balanced
Bitcoin, Permissionless PoW Conditional comparison of systems. Blockchains
2008 payment and address many longstanding inherent
limited smart needs for indelible ledgers, from finan-
contracts through cial transactions to property records
scripts
and supply chains. With powerful
Dash, Combination Proof of stake No existing cryptographic techniques, a
2014 wide set of available variations, and a
Ethereum, Permissionless PoW Yes, nonprivate large amount of resources allocated to
2014 Turing complete these technologies, blockchains hold
objects significant potential.
Hyperledger Permissioned Based on Yes, off-chain
Fabric, state machine Acknowledgments
2015 replication We thank Dan Lee, Linda Oliva, and
Corda, Permissioned Based on Yes (set of Konstantinos Patsourakos for their
2016 state machine functions), helpful comments. Alan T. Sherman
replication including explicit was supported in part by the National
links to human Science Foundation under Scholarship
language for Service grant 1241576.
References
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in the rules for which the old system more than 184 GB). and E. Golaszewski, On the ori-
recognizes valid blocks created by As of September 2018, the hash gins and variations of blockchain
the new system (but not necessar- rate for Bitcoin exceeded 50 mil- technologies. 2018. [Online].
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putationally secure forever in the that, when hashed, produces a cer- 3. L. Lamport, R. Shostak, and M.
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engineering choices. gers) are challenging because it is very 4. S. Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A peer-to-
Additional challenges faci n g hard to find useful problems that have peer electronic cash system,” Bitcoin,
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amounts of energy spent on block- difficulty can be dynamically throt- bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
chain computations (especially tled. Some researchers are exploring 5. A. Back, “Hashcash: A denial of service
PoW), the high rates at which ledgers alternatives to PoW, such as proof counter-measure,” Hashcash, 2002.
grow, and the associated increases of space, proof of stake, and proof of [Online]. Available: http://www
in transaction latency and processing elapsed time. .hashcash.org/papers/hashcash.pdf

76 IEEE Security & Privacy January/February 2019
This article originally appeared in
IEEE Security & Privacy, vol. 17, no. 1, 2019.
6. R. C. Merkle, “Secure communi- 10. N. Szabo, “Smart contracts,” 1994. [On- Farid Javani is a Ph.D. student at
cations over insecure channels,” line]. Available: http://www.fon.hum the University of Maryland, Bal-
Commun. ACM, vol. 21, no. 4, .uva.nl/rob/Courses/Information timore County. Contact him at
pp. 294–299, 1978. [Online]. Avail- InSpeech/CDROM/Literature javani1@umbc.edu.
able: https://dl.acm.org/citation /LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best
.cfm?doid=359460.359473 .vwh.net/smart.contracts.html Haibin Zhang is an assistant professor
7. L. Lamport, “The part-time parlia- 11. E. Wong, “Retrieving dispersed in the Department of Compu-
ment,” ACM Trans. Comput. Syst., vol. data from SDD-1: A system for ter Science and Electrical Engi-
16, no. 2, pp. 133–169, 1998. [Online]. distributed databases,” in Proc. 2nd neering at the Univer s i t y of
Available: https://dl.acm.org Berkeley Workshop Distributed Data Maryland, Baltimore County.
/citation.cfm?doid=279227.279229 Management and Comput. Networks, Haibin received a Ph.D. from the
8. D. L. Chaum, “Computer systems May 1977, pp. 217–235. University of Califor nia, Davis,
established, maintained, and trusted in 2001. His re search interests
by mutually suspicious groups,” Alan T. Sherman is a professor of include di str ibuted comput-
Elect. Eng. Res. Lab., Univ. Cali- computer science at the University i n g a n d secure blockchains.
fornia, Berkeley, Tech. Memo. of Maryland, Baltimore County. Co ntac t h i m at hbzhang@
UCB/ERL/M79/10, 1979. His research interests include umbc.edu.
9. D. L. Chaum, “Computer systems secure voting, applied cryptog-
established, maintained and trusted by raphy, and cybersecurity educa- Enis Golaszewski is a Ph.D. student
mutually suspicious groups,” Ph.D. tion. He is a Senior Member of the at the University of Maryland,
dissertation, Dept. Comput. Sci., IEEE. Contact him at sherman@ Baltimore County. Contact him
Univ. California, Berkeley, 1982. umbc.edu. at golaszewski@umbc.edu.
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Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSEC.2019.2900896
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revised 19 December 2019

IT and Twenty-First Century Employment
BLOCKCHAIN
George Strawn
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine
IT Professional, vol. 21, no. 1, 2019.
& “YABB,” YET ANOTHER book on blockchain (to become disconnected from the network. (Cold War
modify the acronym YACC—yet another complier worries about a nuclear arrack made this a major
compiler), Life After Google, was published in July concern.) By switching packets instead of circuits
of 2018 by the prolific author George Gilder. (Ama- and by distributing the switching function to every
zon currently lists 75 books on the topic.) As Internet router, that goal was achieved.
Gilder lays out in the book, he believes that the cli- On the other hand, very little thought was
ent–server model of current internet usage will be given to other dimensions of network security,
succeeded by a peer-to-peer (P2P) model emp- and so, we have been playing Internet security
loying blockchain: the technology that enabled catch-up ever since. (One might say that it is an ill
the cryptocurrency bitcoin a decade ago. Another wind that blows no good, since Internet security
YABB is IBM’s short Blockchain for Dummies jobs are in plentiful supply.) But as increasingly
(https://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/xi/ more functions of society are transferred to the
en/xim12354usen/ibm-blockchain_second- Internet, its lack of security has become a major
edition_final_XIM12354USEN.pdf), which is avail- societal problem. Gilder and others believe that
able for free download and has the more modest this lack of security is the Achilles heel of today’s
goal of showing how blockchain for business ledg- Internet, and the reason that P2P architecture and
ers is available now for practical use. In this paper, secure blockchain technology will supersede it.
I will review some related characteristics of the The original Internet architecture was in fact
Internet, of P2P, and of blockchain. Then, I will P2P. This simply means that any internet node
describe how blockchain is “ready for business could both provide services to other nodes and/or
use,” and finally, I will comment on its potential ask them to provide services. (For more depth, see
impact on 21st century employment and business. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer.) For
example, the file transfer protocol was/is bidirec-
tional: Any node can send and/or receive files. As
THE INTERNET, P2P, AND the Internet matured in the 1990s and 2000s, impor-
BLOCKCHAIN tant services arose that were unidirectional, for
One of the goals of the Internet architecture was
example, Google searches, Amazon purchases, and
to minimize points of failure. The switching centers
Facebook friends. These services were provided
that characterized the telephone network were
by nodes that came to be called servers, and nodes
such points of failure. If a switching center were to
that utilized those services were called clients.
be destroyed, the telephones in that area would The client–server model is subject to various
security breaches (of course, so is P2P). For exam-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MITP.2018.2879244 ple, distributed denial-of-service attacks flood a
Date of current version 26 February 2019. server with so many requests for service that it
January/February 2019
2469-7087/20 © 2020 IEEE
Published by the IEEE Computer Society
Published by the IEEE Computer Society
1520-9202 2018 IEEE
January 2020
91 15
IT and Twenty-First Century Employment
shuts down. Also, most servers require usernames management, government, supply chain manage-
and passwords from clients (and perhaps credit ment, and health care. Since these use cases
card numbers). So, many users (me included) have replace (or at least reduce) the need for trusted
hundreds of usernames and passwords, which I third party oversight, that reduction in employ-
am supposed to remember and never write down. ment is obvious. Less obvious is the fact that many
(This situation seems to me to provide more liabil- of these use cases can contain “smart contracts”
ity protection for the server than security for the that automate various follow-on functions once a
client.) And security breaches of servers are legion, transaction has been completed (e.g., automatic
yielding crooks millions of usernames, passwords, payment once a shipment has been received).
and credit card numbers. Such hacks are of incre- Thus, the need for fewer manual steps may extend
well beyond transaction management.
asing importance as online banking and other
Perhaps even more important is that these use
significant transactions are conducted online.
cases typically take a significant amount of time to
Blockchain technology is simply a distribu-
complete. The use of blockchain could cut days
ted ledger on a P2P network whose transactions
and weeks to hours and minutes, and since time is
cannot be erased or altered (see https://en.m.
money, use of this technology could be doubly
wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain for implementation
cost-saving. Of course, in addition to increasing effi-
details). As new transactions occur and are verified, ciency, effectiveness could be improved as well. As
they are copied onto all copies of the ledger. It has Chapter Three of Dummies explains, blockchain
been said that blockchain/P2P might to for tran- can reduce business network (information, interac-
sactions what the Internet/Web did for Information. tion, and innovation) frictions in a number of ways.
Share ledgers, P2P transactions, and smart con-
BLOCKCHAIN FOR BUSINESS tracts are at the center of this business innovation.
TRANSACTIONS In a recent blockchain report (https://public.dhe.
Speaking of transactions, they are the busi- ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/gb/en/gbe03835usen/
ness activity that blockchain is ready to facilitate, gbe03835usen-00_GBE03835USEN.pdf) drawing on
according to IBM and others. Companies record 2965 conversations with C-suite executives, IBM
transactions in ledgers, and traditionally, each reported the following industry statistics: Over
company keeps its own ledger. Blockchain tech- one third of organizations across all industries
nology enables a single, shared ledger for all the and regions are already considering or are
companies engaging in related transactions. actively engaged with blockchain, and 66% of
Moreover, this shared ledger has several pleasing early adopters—or explorers—intend to adopt a
security characteristics. First, it is copied onto new platform business model that breaks the
the computers of all participating companies, boundaries of traditional market exchanges. It
making loss of data extremely unlikely. Second, would seem this train is moving.
once a transaction has been “agreed to,” it cannot
be changed or deleted. This provides a new level WHAT IS NEXT?
of “technological trust” that has traditionally Blockchain burst on the scene as the bitcoin
technology only ten years ago. It was the result
been provided by trusted third parties. Regard-
of innovative software, and hardware innova-
ing how a transaction is agreed to, the business
tions followed as the computationally expensive
use just described requires only a simple vote by
mining confirmation of transactions was opti-
the companies involved rather than an expensive
mized. On the other hand, 3-D printing (a.k.a.
“mining” activity as in the bitcoin application.
additive engineering) resulted from hardware
innovations over 30 years ago and is now also
USE CASES, EMPLOYMENT, AND moving (Amazon lists 100 books and gadgets on
OTHER IMPLICATIONS the subject). As Moore’s and related laws con-
Chapter four of Blockchain for Dummies tinue to lower the cost and raise the perfor-
describes a plethora of transaction/ledger use mance of IT systems, predicting what is next
cases the fall within the sphere of blockchain. requires matching new price points, innovative
These use cases occur in a wide range of thinking, and society’s needs and desires. It is an
areas: financial services, multinational policy exciting ride with far to go!
16
92 ComputingEdge
IT Professional
January 2020
Top Technology
12.19
Computer
Trends for 2020

DECEMBER 2019
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Technology IEEE Computer Society tech experts unveil
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Predictions tech. Six of the top 12 technology predictions
have been developed into peer-reviewed
articles published in Computer magazine’s
December 2019 issue, covering topics
such as cognitive robotics, practical drone
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Smart Contracts
A Service-Oriented
Perspective on Blockchain
Smart Contracts
Florian Daniel Luca Guida
Politecnico di Milano Politecnico di Milano
Abstract—Smart contracts turn blockchains into distributed computing platforms.

This paper studies whether smart contracts as implemented by a state-of-the-art
blockchain technology may serve as a component technology for a computing paradigm
like service-oriented computing in the blockchain, in order to foster reuse and increase
cost-effectiveness.
& A BLOCKCHAIN IS a shared, distributed ledger, Next to logging transactions, blockchain plat-
that is, a log of transactions that provides for forms support the execution of pieces of code,
persistency and verifiability of transactions.1 A so-called smart contracts,4,5 able to perform com-
transaction is a cryptographically signed instruc- putations inside the blockchain. For example, a
tion constructed by a user of the blockchain,2 smart contract may be used to automatically
for example, the transfer of cryptocurrency fr- release a given amount of cryptocurrency upon
om one account to another. Transactions are the satisfaction of a condition agreed on by two
grouped into blocks, linked and secured using partners. If we put multiple smart contracts (and
cryptographic hashes. A consensus protocol ena- partners) into communication, we turn the
bles the nodes of the blockchain network to cre- blockchain into a proper distributed computing
ate trust in the state of the log and makes platform.6 This makes the technology appealing
blockchains inherently resistant to tampering.3 to application scenarios that ask for code execu-
Thanks to these properties, blockchain technol- tion that is reliable, verifiable, and transactional.
ogy is able to eliminate the need for a middleman For example, Xu et al.7 propose the use of
from the management of transactions, such as a smart contracts as software connectors for reli-
bank in the transfer of money. able, decentralized data sharing, while Weber
et al.8 propose the integration of multiple smart
contracts for distributed business process execu-
tion. The first example aims to support data
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIC.2018.2890624 providers in publishing data sets and data con-
Date of current version 6 March 2019. sumers in finding and selecting data sets; using
1089-7801 2019 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society IEEE Internet Computing
18
cryptocurrency, data providers are automatic- helps to lower complexity but also increases cor-
ally paid according to the value of the provided rectness by design.
data, establishing an open, blockchain-based mar-
ketplace for data. The second example generates
smart contracts starting from a BPMN choreogra- BLOCKCHAIN AND SMART
phy diagram and puts them into direct communi- CONTRACTS
cation; the idea is to enable the execution of Next to Bitcoin, several alternative platforms
business processes even among potentially have emerged over the last few years. Besides
untrusted partners. The common ingredients of the type of cryptocurrency adopted as incentive
both examples are smart contracts and verifiable mechanism, these platforms distinguish them-
transactions. selves by few key properties.
Developing applications that integrate multi- The access policy tells who can participate in
ple smart contracts is however not easy, and the blockchain network. Public blockchains
today’s predominant ad-hoc development prac- allow anyone to join and to access the informa-
tice will not be able to scale and be sustainable in tion stored in the blockchain via the Internet; pri-
the long term. In fact, Atzei et al.9 show that vate blockchains are restricted to private
already today even simple smart contracts are networks and selected nodes only.
often affected by a variety of security vulnerabil- The validation policy tells who among the
et al.10 show that several of the smart
ities. Nikolic nodes can participate in consensus creation and
contracts deployed on Ethereum either “lock deploy smart contracts. Permissionless block-
funds indefinitely, leak them carelessly to arbi- chains allow every node to perform both; permis-
trary users, or can be killed by anyone.” Singh and sioned blockchains limit these capabilities to
Chopra11 go beyond implementation aspects and special nodes only, e.g., qualified through direct
discuss existing sociotechnical limitations of invitation.
smart contracts, such as lack of control, lack of The consensus protocol specifies how trust is
understanding, and lack of social meaning. created among participants: Proof of work (e.g.,
We argue that future blockchain applications adopted by Bitcoin) requires nodes, so-called
ask for abstractions, methods, and instruments miners, to invest significant hashing power to cre-
that help developers to cope with complexity, ate trust. Proof of stake (Cardano) requires nodes
such as those proposed by service-oriented to prove ownership of sufficient cryptocurrency
computing (SOC). In fact, the characteristics of to establish trust. Byzantine Fault Tolerance uses
the described data sharing scenario directly replication to establish trust in the state of the
map to those of SOC (service provider, service network, even if faced with failing network nodes.
consumer, service broker), yet smart contracts Variants are redundant BFT (Hyperledger Indy)
still lack equivalent support for description, dis- and practical BFT (Quorum), which aim at
covery, and the specification of nonfunctional increased redundancy and speed, respectively.
properties. Similarly, the business process sce- Other notable consensus protocols are proof of
nario resembles very much that of service-based elapsed time (Hyperledger Sawtooth), proof of
business processes, yet the smart contracts gen- importance (NEM), proof of state (Universa Block-
erated in the scenario are tailored to specific chain Protocol), Raft-based consensus (Quorum),
tasks and partner interactions and are not stream-processing ordering services (Hyperledger
directly applicable in processes with different Fabric), and Tempo (Radix DLT).
partners and/or choreography needs. That is, The choice of the consensus protocol affects
while they present significant opportunities for the transaction processing time (time till a trans-
reuse, they do not yet explore them. action is added to a block) and the transaction
In the following, we thus look at smart con- rate (number of transactions processed per sec-
tracts from an SOC perspective and study their ond). These properties and the access and
suitability as elementary pieces for a blockchain- validation policies determine a blockchain’s abil-
based, distributed computing paradigm. The ity to support different distributed computing
assumption is that principled reuse not only scenarios.
www.computer.org/computingedge
47 19
Smart Contracts
Table 1. Core characteristics of four example blockchain platforms.
Hyperledger
Bitcoin Ethereum Corda
Fabric
No built-in No built-in
Cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) Ethereum (ETH)
currency currency
Access policy Public Public Private Private
Validation policy Permissionless Permissionless Permissioned Permissioned
Proof of work Voting-based Validity consen-

Consensus
Proof of work (proof of stake algorithm sus, Uniqueness
protocol
under review�) (Apache Kafka) consensus
Transaction
Almost Almost
processing time � 10 minutes � 15 seconds
instantaneous instantaneous
(average)
Max transaction
� 7 TPS � 20 TPS 3,500 þ TPS � 170 TPS
rate
Bitcoin Script,
high-level
Solidity, Serpent,
languages JVM program-
Smart contract lowlevel Lisp-like
(BALZaC, BitML) Go ming languages
language language (LLL),
compilable to like Kotlin, Java
Mutan
Bitcoin native
transactions
Turing
No Yes Yes Yes
completeness
[Online]. Available: https://cryptoslate.com/ethereums-proof-of-stake-protocol-in-review/
As for the implementation of smart contracts, knowledge and the goal of communicating some
each platform typically supports one or more of the diversity that characterizes current block-
programming languages. Some support general- chain technology.
purpose languages, such as C, Cþþ, C#, F#, Go,
Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Objective-C, PHP, SERVICE ORIENTATION
Python, Rust, and Visual Basic .Net. Others pro- Service orientation is commonly associated
pose platform-specific languages, such as Bit- with the binomial SOAP/WSDL or the REST archi-
coin Script or Ethereum Solidity. The former are tectural style. Smart contracts use neither of
Turing complete, the latter not necessarily (e.g., these, so we fall back to the generic definition by
Bitcoin Script is not). Alonso et al.12 who define services as “com-
In Table 1, we summarize these characteris- ponents that can be integrated into more com-
tics for four platforms: Bitcoin (bitcoin.org), the plex distributed applications.” In order to
first blockchain platform; Ethereum (ethereum. compare different web service technologies,
org), the platform that first introduced Turing- Lagares Lemos et al.13 distinguish services by
complete smart contracts; Hyperledger Fabric their type, interaction style, interaction proto-
(hyperledger.org/projects/fabric), a private, per- col, data format, and descriptor. We discuss
missioned platform hosted by the Linux Founda- these characteristics next for smart contracts, in
tion and supported by more than 200 industry order to enable identifying analogies and differ-
leaders; and Corda (corda.net), a private, per- ences between the proposed service-oriented
missioned platform by a consortium of more interpretation of smart contracts and traditio-
than 200 financial institutions and technology nal web service technologies. We specifically
firms with a focus on interoperability. These focus on Ethereum as such is currently the most
platforms represent an opportunistic selection used blockchain platform for smart contract
(far from exhaustive) based on our own development.
20
48 ComputingEdge
IEEE Internet Computing
January 2020
Contract Type obtain a list of accounts to send cryptocur-
Components encapsulate data to be fetched rency to.
and visualized or integrated and/or application Business-protocol-based interactions support
logic to be interacted with. What the component patterns that may involve multiple interac-
delivers is a function of the type of the compo- tions and multiple clients or contracts; the
nent. For smart contracts we can distinguish the protocol specifies the order of interactions
following contract types: and the roles of the involved parties.
As running smart contracts costs money,
Generic contracts implement application
contracts are activated only in response to
logic, e.g., for deposit management, that can
explicit invocations. A contract or a group of
be invoked by blockchain clients or by other
interacting contracts is thus always triggered by
contracts; in general, this type of contract is
a client transaction, and independent, active
stateful in that it maintains application state
behaviors are typically not supported.
across interactions.
Libraries implement one or more functions, Interaction Protocol
e.g., a math library, that are meant for reuse This tells how a component implements its
by other contracts; libraries do not store interactions. Conventional web services use
internal variables and are stateless. message-oriented protocols such as SOAP or
Data contracts provide data storage services HTTP, while all major programming languages
inside the blockchain, e.g., a client references also support RPC-like interactions (Remote Pro-
manager, that are meant for use by other cedure Calls). Ethereum uses a message-based
contracts; by design, they are stateful. protocol supporting the following interaction
features:
Oracles deliver data services from the out- Transactions are used by blockchain cli-
side of the blockchain to the inside of the
ents (the users of the blockchain) to cre-
blockchain, e.g., currency conversation
ate new contracts or to invoke existing
rates. Contracts cannot make calls outside
contracts; once validated, which consumes
the blockchain, as outside dependencies
cryptocurrency, transactions are added
may prevent verifiability (conversion rates
to the blockchain and remain publicly
change over time). If data from the outside is
accessible.
needed, it can be pushed by clients to Events enable a contract to push infor-
oracles using transactions; these then allow
mation to the outside world in response
other contracts to query for the data.
to a transaction invoking the contract;
when the transaction is added to the
Interaction Style blockchain, also the event becomes pub-
Integrating a component into a composite licly accessible.
application usually does not only involve a one- Calls (so-called message calls) are used by
shot query or call. It may be necessary to inter- contracts to interact with each other in a
act with the component multiple times and to fashion that uses different state spaces for
establish some form of conversation with it. For each contract for isolation; calls are exe-
smart contracts we have: cuted locally to each blockchain node and
Pull interactions enable a client or contract do not consume cryptocurrency.
to initiate an interaction and to invoke a con- Delegate calls are used by contracts to invoke
tract that otherwise would be passive; for libraries in a fashion where functions are exe-
instance, a client may invoke a contract to cuted in one, the caller’s, state space; dele-
withdraw a deposit. gate calls too are node-local and do not
Push interactions enable the contract to consume cryptocurrency.
become active and to initiate an interaction If an interaction originates from a blockchain
with clients or other contracts; for instance, client, it uses JSON-RPC or is enacted using the
a contract may invoke a data contract to command line; if it originates from a smart
49 21
Smart Contracts
contract, the message is exchanged via RPC. languages such as OWL-S, WSDL-S, and WSMO
Transactions contain a set of predefined param- are used to describe service endpoints, opera-
eters: the number of transactions sent by the tions, and data formats.
sender, the amount of cryptocurrency the The construct that gets closest to a
sender is willing to pay for consumed resources description of Ethereum smart contracts is
(so-called gas), the maximum consumable the so-called “ABI in JSON” interface descrip-
amount of gas, the address of the recipient, the tion produced by the Solidity compiler during
amount of cryptocurrency to be transferred, compilation, as exemplified by the following
possible signatures of the sender, and either lines of code:
the code of the contract to be created or input [{
data to be processed. Events contain, among “type”: “function”,
others, one or more topics that allow clients to “inputs”: [{“name”: “username”, “type”: “string”},
search for and subscribe to events and a data {“name”: “password”, “type”: “string”}],
field. Calls contain the sender and receiver “name”: “create_user”,
“outputs”: [{“name”: “success”, “type”: “bool”}]
addresses, a possible value and data; calls may
}, {
return a value. “type”: “event”,
“inputs”: [{“name”: “username”, “type”: “string”,
Data Format “indexed”: true},
The data format determines how exchanged {“name”: “count”, “type”: “uint256”,
“indexed”: false}],
data is formatted. Message-oriented interaction
“name”: “user_created”
protocols typically support self-describing docu- }]
ment formats like XML and JSON; RPC-oriented
protocols enable the exchange of native data The description specifies one function
structures, such as Java or JavaScript objects, (create_user) and one event (user_created),
using an internal, binary format hidden to along with their inputs and outputs. The inputs
developers. of the event are their publicly accessible argu-
Data in Ethereum transactions and events is ments stored in the blockchain; indexed argu-
encoded using the Application Binary Interface ments are searchable. What this description
(ABI), which specifies how functions are called does not include is the name of the contract, its
and data are formatted. Clients either serialize address, the network/chain ID if the contract is
data in a binary format on their own, e.g., when deployed on a test network, and non-functional
using the command line or by using a suitable properties (e.g., the cost of invoking the func-
library function, e.g., the function toPayload of tion). These are essential for search and discov-
the library web3.js. Values are encoded in ery. Also, Ethereum does not come with a
sequential order and according to their data registry for smart contracts, although contract
types and are not self-describing. In order to metadata (containing the ABI in JSON descrip-
allow the receiver to identify which function is tion) can be stored in Swarm, a redundant
called, the sequence of values is preceded by 4 B and decentralized store of Ethereum’s public
of a Keccak-256 hash of the respective function record.
signature. This allows everybody to parse the
binary formatted data.
Data in message/delegate calls between con- STATE OF TECHNOLOGY
tracts is exchanged by passing variables, mask- In Table 2, we summarize how these SOA
ing the underlying ABI formatting. characteristics are manifest (or not) in the four
platforms we introduced earlier.
Description As expected, Bitcoin is the most limited plat-
The final aspect of components is component form in terms of features supported when it
description, which enables discovery and selec- comes to smart contracts. In fact, it was born as
tion. For web services, description languages support for its homonymous cryptocurrency
such as WSDL and WADL and semantics-oriented and less to support generic computations.
22
50 ComputingEdge
January 2020
Table 2. SOC perspective on selected smart contract technologies.
Hyperledger
Bitcoin Ethereum Corda
Fabric
Contracts,
Contracts
Contracts, libraries, data Contracts,
Contract type (chaincode), data
oracles contracts, libraries, oracles
contracts
oracles
Pull and push Pull and push
Pull interactions, Pull and push interactions,
Interaction style
interactions business interactions business
protocols protocols
Transactions,
Transactions,
calls (limited to
inter-node
Transactions, contracts on
messages
Interaction events, message same node and
Transactions (so-called flows),
protocol calls, delegate channel),
scheduled
calls events—exposes
invocations of
REST APIs toward
contracts
these
Binary payloads Any type of the
in transactions contract
Binary or JSON
Binary payloads and events, language, zip
Data format formatted
in transactions Solidity data attachments
key-value pairs
types in message/ referenced using
delegate calls hashes
Contract Chaincode
metadata (JSON) metadata with
No contract to be published interfaces, No contract
Description
description on a public endpoints, and description
storage platform interaction
(e.g., Swarm) schemas
Ethereum, on the other hand, is the most com- Ethereum message/delegate calls pass native
plete platform, with Hyperledger Fabric and Solidity data structures. Hyperledger Fabric
Corda providing comparable features. structures data as key-value pairs in binary and/
In terms of contract types, all platforms sup- or JSON format. Corda, in addition to generic
port oracles, except Hyperledger Fabric for Kotlin/Java data objects, also supports transac-
which so-called “gateway services” are still tions with generic attachments; attachments are
under discussion (as of June 2018). Reusable zipped and hash referenced.
code libraries are supported only by Ethereum As for the description of smart contracts for
and Corda. It is important to note that contracts search and reuse, support is very limited. Only
generally encapsulate application logic; data Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric provide basic
contracts are typically very limited in their stor- metadata describing a contract’s interface (oper-
age capacity, as storing data on the blockchain ations and arguments), but we are far from a
may incur significant costs. common description format let alone a registry
All platforms except Bitcoin support pull and for the discovery of contracts.
push interactions; Bitcoin features only client-
originated pull transactions. Looking at the DISCUSSION AND OUTLOOK
interaction protocols, Ethereum, Hyperledger By now, there is a general consensus that the
Fabric, and Corda support transactions, calls impact of blockchain will go far beyond crypto-
between contracts, and events; Bitcoin has only currencies, possibly with disruptive effects on
transactions. distributed application development.14 The key
Payload data is binary formatted in Bitcoin enabler for this impact is smart contracts able to
and Ethereum transactions and events, while support a new kind of distributed computing.6
51 23
Smart Contracts
While the number and types of platforms for shared interaction styles and protocols
smart contracts are constantly growing—this as well as data formats and, of course,
paper studies four of them, dozens of others authentication and certification mechanisms.
have emerged—the resulting technological land- A particular challenge is cross-blockchain
scape is getting increasingly intricate and integration.
heterogeneous. Composition: Finally, in order to be able to
Yet, this paper shows that from an exploit the full power of smart contracts
application point of view the conceptual under- (and to collectively save resources and
pinnings of this new landscape are more inte- money) it is necessary to conceive and imple-
grated than one would expect and that smart ment composition solutions able to abstract
contracts, to some extent, may indeed be inter- away from technicalities and to provide
preted as elementary pieces, that is, services, developers with instruments and infrastruc-
of a blockchain-based, SOC paradigm. The tures that enhance productivity effectively.
paper, however, also shows that we are still far
from a smart contract model that sees interop- In short, what we envision is an evolution from
erability and reusability as beneficial features, today’s technology silos to an abstract, reuse-
as instead we are used to in the context of SOC. oriented contract ecosystem able to preserve the
In order to enable service orientation in guarantees proper of blockchain technology.
blockchain and to unleash the full power of
smart contracts, several challenges need to be & REFERENCES
faced, among which we mention: 1. S. Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash
Search, discovery and reuse: It is striking that system,” 2008, [Online]. Available: https://bitcoin.org/
so little attention has been paid so far to en/bitcoin-paper
enable developers to reuse already deployed 2. G. Wood, “Ethereum: A secure decentralised
contracts, especially if we consider that generalised transaction ledger,” Ethereum Project
deploying a new contract is typically more Yellow Paper, vol. 151, pp. 1–32, 2014.
cost-intensive then just invoking an already 3. D. Mingxiao, M. Xiaofeng, Z. Zhe, W. Xiangwei, and
deployed one. Suitable abstract descriptors C. Qijun, “A review on consensus algorithm of
and searchable registries are badly needed. blockchain,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Syst., Man,
Cost awareness: Smart contracts natively Cybern., 2017, pp. 2567–2572.
incorporate the concept of resource con- 4. N. Szabo, “Smart contracts: Building blocks for digital
sumption and cost of invocations. It is crucial markets,” EXTROPY: J. Transhumanist Thought, 1996,
that smart contracts be able to properly Art. no. 16.
communicate and negotiate these kinds of 5. R. M. Parizi and A. Dehghantanha, “Smart contract
service levels, enabling a natural pay-per- programming languages on blockchains: An empirical
invocation model. evaluation of usability and security,” in Proc. Int. Conf.
Performance: Libraries and data contracts Blockchain, 2018, pp. 75–91.
are executed locally inside each node and 6. B. Dickson, “How blockchain can create the world’s
have thus negligible response times; oracles biggest supercomputer,” TechCrunch, Dec. 2016.
and generic contracts, which may require 7. X. Xu et al., “The blockchain as a software connector,”
transaction processing, may lead to higher, in Proc. 13th Work. IEEE/IFIP Conf. Softw. Archit.,
unpredictable response times. The challenge 2016, pp. 182–191.
is improving performance in terms of trans- 8. I. Weber, X. Xu, R. Riveret, G. Governatori, A. Ponomarev,
action rates and processing times. and J. Mendling, “Untrusted business process
Interoperability and standardization: Today, monitoring and execution using blockchain,” In Proc. Int.
platforms concentrate on own technologies Conf. Bus. Process Manage., 2016, pp. 329–347.
as distinguishing feature, which is under- 9. N. Atzei, M. Bartoletti, and T. Cimoli, “A survey of
standable. This, however, slows down inte- attacks on Ethereum smart contracts (sok),” in
gration, which eventually will nevertheless Principles of Security and Trust. Berlin, Germany:
be needed. The challenge is agreeing on Springer, 2017, pp. 164–186.
24
52 ComputingEdge
January 2020
, A. Kolluri, I. Sergey, P. Saxena, and
10. I. Nikolic Florian Daniel is an Associate Professor with Poli-
tecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. His research interests
A. Hobor, “Finding the greedy, prodigal, and suicidal
include service-oriented computing, blockchain,
contracts at scale,” arXiv:1802.06038, 2018.
business process management, and data science.
11. M. P. Singh and A. K. Chopra, “Violable contracts and
He received the Ph.D. degree in information technol-
governance for blockchain applications,”
ogy from Politecnico di Milano. Contact him at florian.
arXiv:1801.02672, 2018. daniel@polimi.it.
12. G. Alonso, F. Casati, H. Kuno, and V. Machiraju, Web
Services. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2004. Luca Guida is a graduate of Politecnico di Milano,
13. A. Lagares Lemos, F. Daniel, and B. Benatallah, “Web Milan, Italy. His research interests include block-
service composition: A survey of techniques and tools,” chain, service-oriented computing, and spatial data
ACM Comput. Surveys, vol. 48, no. 3, Feb. 2016, Art. no. 33. analysis. He received the master’s degree (cum
14. L. Mearian, “What is blockchain? The most disruptive laude) in computer science and engineering from
tech in decades.” IDG Commun., Inc., Framingham,
Politecnico di Milano and Alta Scuola Politecnica,
Milan, Italy. Contact him at luca.guida@mail.polimi.it.
MA, USA, May 2018.

IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 23, no. 1, 2019.
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COMPSAC 2020
Madrid, Spain
July 13-17, 2020
COMPSAC is the IEEE Computer Society Signature Conference on Computers, Software and Applications. It is a major
international forum for academia, industry, and government to discuss research results and advancements, emerging challenges,
and future trends in computer and software technologies and applications. The theme of COMPSAC 2020 is “Driving Intelligent
Transformation of the Digital World”.
Staying relevant in a constantly evolving digital landscape is a challenge faced by researchers, developers, and producers in
virtually every industry and area of study. Once limited to software-enabled devices, the ubiquity of digitally-enabled systems
makes this challenge a universal issue. Furthermore, as relevance fuels change, many influencers will offer solutions that benefit
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Organizers
Standing Committee Chair: Sorel Reisman (California State University, USA)
Steering Committee Chair: Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed (Marquette University, USA)
General Chairs: Mohammad Zulkernine (Queen’s University, Canada), Edmundo Tovar (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid,
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EDITOR JEFFREY VOAS
CYBERTRUST NIST; j.voas@ieee.org
Cryptocurrencies:
Transparency Versus
Privacy
Nir Kshetri, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
that provide reasonable levels of
privacy to users. To make the costs of
Cryptocurrencies can have significant privacy transparency less severe to privacy,
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
costs. A motivated adversary has available employ pseudonymity. Users can
a range of actions to identify the actual user conduct transactions with one an-
other without disclosing any infor-
associated with a cryptocurrency account. By mation related to their identity.
Concealing the Internet Protocol (IP)
taking appropriate measures, cryptocurrency addresses of users is another mech-
anism that provides protection to
users can minimize privacy violations and cryptocurrency user privacy. For ex-
reduce the risk of privacy breaches. ample, in the Bitcoin network, cor-
T
respondence cannot be established
between transactions and IP addresses.
ransparency is a major factor that is driving Bitcoin users are connected to a peer-to-peer (P2P) network.
the use of blockchain-based applications such Data continue to flow among the devices connected to the
as cryptocurrencies. A major question becomes P2P network until everyone has the information related to
whether transparency provides reasonable pri- a transaction. No one, except for the originator, knows who
vacy protection. For instance, many fi rms in the fi nancial initiated the transaction.1
sector do not like the fact that blockchain’s transparent
nature gives other users access to the details of conducted CONSEQUENCES OF PRIVACY VIOLATIONS
transactions. IN THE CRYPTO-WORLD
Let’s begin with cryptocurrencies. It is important to Individuals and organizations are likely to suffer more se-
note that cryptocurrencies possess built-in mechanisms vere consequences from cases of privacy violation if they en-
gage in illegal behaviors using cryptocurrencies (compared
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MC.2018.2876182
with other transaction models). For example, if someone is
Date of publication: 15 January 2019 caught in a crime, the cryptocurrency account can be linked
2469-7087/20 © 2020 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society January 2020 27
CO M PUTE R 0018-9162/18©2018IEEE NOVEMBER 2018 99
CYBERTRUST
to any crime committed by that person Blockchain ledgers are searchable CRYPTOCURRENCIES
in the past. Privacy breaches are likely and, hence, can be used to track transac- HAVE DIFFERENT
to lead to more severe criminal conse- tions.5 If a leak involves the amount and LEVELS OF PRIVACY
quences, referred as an amplified techni- time of the purchase, a motivated adver- Well-known cryptocurrencies such as
cal impact.2 sary can convert the purchase amount Bitcoin have not been able to meet all
privacy needs of users. As mentioned,
financial firms are concerned that
blockchain’s ledger allows other users
to access the details of transactions al-
Zcash transactions have two types of addresses: ready conducted. In response to these
transparent and shielded. demands, some cryptocurrencies pro-
vide users with higher levels of pri-
vacy protection.
Privacy is important for citizens and into Bitcoins using the exchange rate Blockchain is still in early-stage
businesses. If an individual uses Bitcoin at that time. Then, a blockchain can development, and various alternative
to pay for certain goods or services, the be searched for a transaction of that models and forms of cryptocurren-
party with whom the transaction is be- amount and at that time. This gives away cies are evolving along with it. For
ing made can know exactly how much the user’s Bitcoin address. Any other instance, to make blockchain more ap-
money the individual has. This may purchases made using that address are pealing to financial institutions, the cryp-
increase the threat to personal safety. now easier to trace.4 tocurrency Zcash, which was launched
A supplier that has received a payment Sometimes, an act of carelessness in October 2016, has promised transac-
from a business would know how much on the part of the user may decrease tional privacy.6 It employs cryptogra-
money the business has. Knowing fund privacy. This happened to Ross Ul- phy to enhance user privacy.
availability and customer price sensi- bricht, who created the online black Zcash transactions can be made
tivity could affect future negotiations. market Silk Road, best known as a plat- transparent, like those of Bitcoin, or
Finally, if online businesses have infor- form for selling illegal drugs. When shielded through a zero-knowledge
mation about a consumer’s spending Ulbricht looked for help to expand the proof. Zcash transactions have two
patterns, they could predict the high- Silk Road business, he used the same types of addresses: transparent and
est price that the consumer could pay. pseudonym that he had adopted pre- shielded. In transparent addresses, as
The business could then use price tam- viously to post announcements on ille- is the case for Bitcoin, the monetary
pering to increase profits.3 gal drug discussion forums. This made amount of the transaction as well as
him an FBI suspect. The FBI tracked information about the receiver and the
UNWANTED PERSONAL his IP address to an Internet café in sender appears in the blockchain. On
INFORMATION LEAKS San Francisco and caught Ulbricht as the other hand, if a shielded address is
There are various sources of unwanted he was logging in to Silk Road as an used, the address is “obscured” on the
personal information leaks in transac- administrator.1 public ledger. Also, if both the sender
tions involving cryptocurrencies. For A not he r pr iv a c y pr oble m o c- and the receiver use shielded addresses,
instance, while Bitcoin transactions curs when users of cryptocurrencies the transaction amount is encrypted.
are difficult to track, they are not com- such as Bitcoin reuse addresses. By Users of shielded addresses con-
pletely anonymous. All transactions are doing so, they publicly disclose infor- stitute a small proportion of Zcash
recorded in a permanent public ledger. mation about past financial transac- adopters. In early 2017, shielded ad-
After the Bitcoins are moved from that tions, and this can compromise their dresses accounted for about 0.8% of
address, financial movements can be privacy. The transparency and im- Zcash transactions.7 That propor-
traced. Users can be traced through IP mutabi l it y feat ures of cr y ptoc ur- tion is predicted to increase to 4% by
addresses and money flows. A team of rencies like Bitcoin make it possible mid-2018.8
researchers studied 130 major merchants to track every transaction involving A relatively low adoption rate of
that allow Bitcoin transactions. They a given address. Even if a person has shielded addresses might be due to the
found that at least 53 of the merchants engaged in careful processes to hide additional time and computational re-
leaked payment information to at least 40 his or her identity, once a link has sources required. Shielded addresses
third parties. While most of the informa- been established between a person’s require a more computationally in-
tion leaked was intentional and used for identity and a Bitcoin address, all past tensive process. To use Zcash’s pri-
advertising and analytics, some merchant transactions made by the owner of the vacy features, users may need 4 GB or
websites also leaked precise blockchain Bitcoin address will be associated to more of RAM (tinyurl.com/y9dtj3dh).
transaction information to trackers.4 the owner’s identity. With 4 GB of RAM, operations were

100 COMPUTER W W W.CO M P U T E R .O R G /CO M P U T E R
reported to take as long as 2 min to can trace transactions to individuals REFERENCES
complete.9 Therefore, most exchanges and groups. Elliptic’s services are used 1. J. Bohannon. (2016, Mar. 9). Why
and wallets support only transparent by online exchanges and law enforce- criminals can’t hide behind
Zcash transactions.8 ment to detect money laundering (bit Bitcoin. Science. [Online]. Avail-
Likewise, Monero focuses on privacy .ly/1T3SBwc). able: http://www.sciencemag.org/
and untraceability by hiding the transac- The higher levels of privacy offered news/2016/03/why-criminals-cant-
tion’s sender, receiver, and monetary by cryptocurrencies such as Monero hide-behind-bitcoin
amount. To achieve this, Monero mixes and Zcash concern regulators who 2. ISACA, Generating value from
Monero “coins” with other forms of pay- are focused on money laundering. A big data analytics, ISACA,
ments. This makes it nearly impossible cybercrime expert at the European Schaumburg, IL, White Paper,
to link a transaction to any particular Union’s law enforcement agency, Eu- 2014. Available: http://www.isaca
identity or previous transaction from the ropol, noted that criminals have be- .org/Knowledge-Center
same source if only Monero’s blockchain gun shifting away from Bitcoin to /Research/ResearchDeliverables
is searched.10 cryptocurrencies with higher levels of /Pages/Generating-Value-From-
Despite higher levels of user privacy privacy (tinyurl.com/yat9hucw). In re- Big-Data-Analytics.aspx
from Monero and Zcash, these cryp- cent years, regulators have increased 3. draglet.com. (2018). What is
tocurrencies have not yet achieved their focus on cryptocurrencies with Monero? Everything you need to
higher popularity. For instance, as of higher degrees of nontraceability. In know. Draglet. [Online]. Available:
mid-July 2018, market capitalization June 2018, in testimony before the https://www.draglet.com
o f Monero and Zcash was about $2 bil- House of Representatives Committee /what-is-monero/
lion and $816 million, respectively, on Financial Services Subcommittee 4. technologyreview.com. (2017,
compared with Bitcoin’s $115 billion and on Terrorism and Illicit Finance, an Aug. 23). Bitcoin transactions
Ethereum’s $48 billion (coinmarket official of the US Secret Service rec- aren’t as anonymous as everyone
cap.com/). ommended better regulation of less hoped. Technology Review. [On-
traceable cr yptocurrencies to pre- line]. Available: https://www
REGULATORY AND LAW vent illegal activities from benefiting .technologyreview.com/s/608716
ENFORCEMENT RESPONSES from nontraceable coins (tinyurl.com/ /bitcoin-transactions-arent-
Regulatory and law enforcement agen- ycot283t). as-anonymous-as-everyone-hoped/
cies are now focusing on illegal activi- 5. E. Aldaz-Carroll and E. Aldaz-
C
ties associated with cryptocurrencies. Carroll. (2018, Feb. 1). Can
Law enforcement agencies are con- ryptocurrencies’ transparency cryptocurrencies and blockchain
cerned with the anonymity features of a n d im mutabi lit y features help fight corruption? Brookings.
cryptocurrencies. At a congressional come with a privacy cost. Ad- [Online]. Available: https://
hearing, former assistant US attorney versaries can use a range of actions to www.brookings.edu/blog/future-
Kathryn Haun noted that, when regu- identify the actual user associated with development/2018/02/01
lators issue subpoenas requesting doc- a specific cryptocurrency account. /can-cryptocurrencies-an
uments relating individual identities It is important for cryptocurrency d-blockchain-help-fight-corruption/
to illicit activities at cryptocurrency users to be aware that their privacy can 6. L. Clozel. (2016). How Zcash tries to
exchanges, subpoenas may return in- be compromised. Users need to take balance privacy, transparency in
formation such as “Mickey Mouse” liv- precautions to minimize privacy vio- Blockchain. American Banker. [On-
ing at “123 Main Street” (tinyurl.com/ lations and mitigate the risk of privacy line]. Available: http://www
y8g2x23c). breaches. Users should refrain from re- .americanbanker.com/news
Academic researchers and block- using identities in both their noncryp- /law-regulation/how-zcash-tries-
chain intelligence companies are us- tocurrency and cryptocurrency worlds. to-balance-privacy-transparency-
ing advances in computer science, Likewise, by reusing cryptocurrency in-blockchain-1092198-1.html
economics, and forensics to help law addresses, users are more likely to pub- 7. A. Hertig. (2017, Jan. 13). Hardly
enforcement. Law enforcement agen- licly disclose personal information. anyone seems to be using Zcash’s
cies now have access to advanced tech- Higher levels of privacy require generat- anonymity features. Coin Desk.
niques to track illegal activities that ing a new address for each transaction. [Online]. Available: https://www
employ cryptocurrencies. Elliptic, .coindesk.com/hardly-anyone-is-
a blockchain intelligence company, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS using-zcashs-anonymity-features-
uses artificial intelligence to scan I thank Jeff Voas for numerous edits but-we-couldnt-tell-if-they-were/
and analyze the Bitcoin network to and suggestions on previous versions 8. B. Penny. (2018, May 3). What is ZEC?
identify suspicious transactions. It of this article. Introduction to Zcash: Blockchains
NOVEMBER 2018 101
can cause zzzzz, but pure currency able: https://blog.z.cash
cryptos can really push boundaries. /software-usability-and-hardware- N I R K S H E T R I i s a p rofe s s o r of
management in the Bryan School of
Crypto Briefing. [Online]. Available: requirements/
Business and Economics at the Uni-
https://cryptobriefing.com 10. A. Greenberg. (2018, Mar. 27). versity of North Carolina at Greensboro.
/what-is-zec-introduction-to-zcash/ The dark web’s favorite currency Contact him at nbkshetr@uncg.edu.
9. P. Peterson. (2016, Oct. 19). User is less untraceable than it seems.
expectations at Sprout Pt. 2: Wired. [Online]. Available:
Software usability and hardware https://www.wired.com/story
requirements. Zcash. [Online]. Avail- /monero-privacy/
Computer, vol. 51, no. 11, 2018.
Call for Papers:

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NOVEMBER 2018 111
COLUMN: LIFE IN THE C-SUITE
Skills and Competencies

for Digital Transformation
Stephen J. Andriole Digital transformation requires a special set of skills and
Villanova University School
competencies, such as BPM, robotic process automation,
of Business
cloud computing, emerging technology, agile program
Editor:
Stephen J. Andriole, management, cybersecurity, and effective internal and
Villanova University School external communications skills.
of Business;
steve@andriole.com
CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, COOs, CFOs, and CEOs need teams with
the right skills and competencies, especially ones that enable
digital transformation. At the very least, teams need skills and
competencies in the following areas.
BUSINESS ANALYSIS MODELING, SIMULATION,

AND AUTOMATION
The requirement here includes knowledge of business process modeling/management (BPM), robotic
process automation (RPA), requirements identification, modeling and validation, and, of course, digital
transformation itself. It also assumes the ability to model, simulate and measure existing and future
business processes and whole new business models. This area also assumes knowledge of, and
experience with, requirements matching with external vendor capabilities and specific transformation
programs and projects.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, ESPECIALLY

DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
This requirement includes knowledge of emerging technologies that might—and should—disrupt the
business rules, processes, and models of specific vertical industries and companies. The requirement
also assumes competency in competitive technology intelligence. It assumes wide and deep
knowledge of, and experience with, the adoption of disruptive technology. Of special importance are
emerging/disruptive technologies like virtual/augmented reality, automated reasoning, distributed
ledger technology, cashless payment systems, real-time statistical/augmented analytics, simulation/
gaming technology, location-based technology, and disruptive interface technologies like intelligent
speech and facial recognition, among others.
IT Professional Published by the IEEE Computer Society

2469-7087/20 © 2020 IEEE
November/December 2018 Published by the IEEE Computer
78Society January 2020
1520-9202/18/$33.00 31
2018 IEEE
LIFE IN THE C-SUITE
STATISTICAL AND AUGMENTED ANALYTICS

The requirement here includes knowledge of structured and unstructured descriptive, explanatory, and
predictive analytics. It also includes knowledge of, and experience with, the major open source
analytics platforms like Hadoop and Spark, among others. It focuses on data science, data
representation, deep learning, simulation, and displays. The requirement also includes knowledge of
augmented analytics, which, according to the Gartner Group, is “an approach that automates insights
using machine learning and natural-language generation, (and) marks the next wave of disruption in
the data and analytics market.”1
CLOUD COMPUTING
The requirement here includes knowledge of all flavors of cloud delivery, including all of the service
models that cloud computing provides, such as infrastructure (IaaS), software (SaaS), platform (PaaS),
security (SaaS), mobility (MaaS), analytics (AaaS), blockchain (BaaS), and even learning (LaaS). It is
also about knowledge of, and experience with, alternative cloud delivery architectures, cloud service
level agreements (SLAs), cloud performance metrics, and cloud virtualization (especially container)
technologies.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
The requirement here is on operational, delivery, organization, and financial metrics, including metrics
around online cloud application performance, cloud application availability, delivery incidents, SLA
adherence, project performance (especially satisfaction), personnel performance reviews, budgeting,
and resource costs. Knowledge and experience here also refer to the tools available to track, measure,
and report technology performance metrics.
REMOTE, AGILE PROJECT, AND

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
This requirement includes knowledge of project and program management tools, techniques, and best
practices. It assumes knowledge of, and experience with, project and program management of small
and large-scale technology projects and familiarity with the array of tools available to the professional
project and program managers. This assumes the ability to manage projects and programs cost-
effectively, within task-defined timelines, and remotely. It also assumes agility.
COMPETITIVE VENDOR MANAGEMENT

This requirement includes knowledge of technology vendor management best (and worst) practices.
This assumes knowledge of, and experience with, the development of requests for information,
requests for proposals, and requests for quotes, including automated tools to develop and compare
these documents. This also assumes the development of detailed SLAs and the management tools for
measuring SLA compliance and performance. Communications and negotiation skills are also part of
this skills/competencies area.
DIGITAL SECURITY AND SECURITY MANAGEMENT

The requirement here includes knowledge of the variety of current and emerging security
technologies including blockchain technology, multifactor authentication, application isolation,
intelligent/automated security tools, mobile application wrapper technology, detection
technologies, IaaS/SaaS device security technologies, automated testing, and pervasive/IoT
security technologies, among others. The security requirement also includes knowledge of
security challenges and processes, including security policies and the adoption of best practices,
compliance with industry standards (such as ISO27002), regulatory compliance (such as with
32 ComputingEdge
November/December 2018 79 January 2020
www.computer.org/itpro
IT PROFESSIONAL
GDPR), vulnerability assessment/remediation, penetration testing, incident response, network and

systems monitoring, forensic analysis, security awareness and training, backup, and recovery,
among others. The focus should be on audit-approved security-as-a-service, not on in-house
security delivery core competencies.
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS

This requirement includes experience writing reports and creating presentations that are easily
understood and therefore actionable. The key to communication is purposeful brevity: Is the
team capable of such (written and oral) communication? Communications should also be
customized to specific audiences, such as executives, boards, internal auditors, sales and
marketing professionals, and customers, among others. Making presentations that are easily
understood and therefore actionable is an essential skill. Verbal communications should also be
customized to specific audiences, such as executives, boards, internal auditors, sales and
marketing professionals, and customers, among others. The requirement also includes
experience presenting to outside constituencies and stakeholders, especially vendors, external
auditors, customers, and professional organizations. Senior members of the technology team
must be “presentable” to a wide external audience. As the company’s business-technology
representatives—and as one of the principal spokespersons for digital transformation—the
senior team (especially the CIO, CTO, CMO, COO, CFO, and CEO) must all be superb
presenters.
FILLING THE GAPS

If a company is not a
These skills and competencies should be used to assess digital
transformation capabilities, which involves an objective disruptor, it is disruptable.
workforce assessment of the business-technology team. If gaps
exist—as they likely will—CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, COOs, CFOs, Digital transformation thus
and CEOs must react accordingly. Digital transformation is
complicated yet potentially extremely impactful, especially
becomes a survival tactic
when transformation leverages emerging and disruptive and a long-term strategy.
technology, but skills and competencies gaps must be
addressed.
CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, COOs, CFOs, and CEOs have three options: repair, rent, or replace. The
repair option is often a good one: retrain and retool the willing keepers. Rethink how many full-
time permanent technology professionals are necessary: rent the others as consultants,
contractors, and long-term vendors. Unfortunately, companies may also have to replace some
members of the business-technology team. While this is always difficult, unsalvageable talent
threatens competitiveness.
Digital transformation is challenging—and continuously necessary. This is not the first time we have
heeded the call to “re-engineer,” and it will not be the last. “Digital transformation” is today’s unique
call to action. It is unique today because of the trajectory of digital technology and the impact that
current, emerging, and disruptive technology has had on business processes and whole new business
models. Industries and companies now live in fear of disruption because of what is happened to the
travel, delivery, transportation, insurance, and retail industries. The real estate, banking, and election
industries are next—and with a vengeance.
Said differently, if a company is not a disruptor, it is disruptable. Digital transformation thus
becomes a survival tactic and a long-term strategy. CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, COOs, CFOs, and
CEOs have little choice. They must identify the skills and competencies necessary to remain
competitive. The list will change over time, and sometimes very quickly—disruptively. C-
Suiters must educate, re-educate, train, retrain, replace, and rent the necessary skills and
competencies quickly, effectively, and continuously to assure competitiveness through digital
transformation.
November/December 2018 80 33
LIFE IN THE C-SUITE
REFERENCE
1. “Augmented analytics is the future of data and analytics,” Gartner, Jul. 2017. Available at:
https://www.gartner.com/doc/3773164/augmented-analytics-future-data-analytics
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen J. Andriole is the Thomas G. Labrecque Professor of Business Technology
with the Villanova School of Business, Villanova University, where he teaches courses
in strategic technology and innovation and entrepreneurialism. Contact him at
steve@andriole.com.

IT Professional, vol. 20, no. 6, 2018.
Rejuvenating Binary Executables Visual Privacy Protection Communications Jamming

■ ■ Policing Privacy Dynamic Cloud Certification Security for High-Risk Users
■ ■ Smart TVs Code Obfuscation The Future of Trust
■ ■
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IEEE Security & Privacy magazine provides articles

with both a practical and research bent by the top
thinkers in the field.
• stay current on the latest security tools and theories and gain invaluable practical and
research knowledge,
• learn more about the latest techniques and cutting-edge technology, and computer.org/security
• discover case studies, tutorials, columns, and in-depth interviews and podcasts for the
information security industry.
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Editor: Sarah Gregory
REQUIREMENTS Intel Corporation
sarah.c.gregory@ ieee.org
Ubiquitous
Requirements
Engineering
A Paradigm Shift That Affects Everyone
Karina Villela, Eduard C. Groen, and Joerg Doerr
IN RECENT YEARS, we have wit- thereby become ubiquitous.1 Our In this department, we discuss
nessed profound changes in busi- view, as shown in Figure 1, consists four of the six transformations to-
ness and society. The use of digital of six dimensions of ubiquity in ward ubiquitous R E , combining
technologies has brought about dis- RE. For each dimension, we have “open RE” and “cross-domain RE”
ruptive changes in every domain, identified the transformation (col- due to their strong synergy. These
changes that are widely known as the ored rectangle) required to overcome transformations have a great impact
“digital transformation.” Systems are the critical barrier posed by the sta- in industry and may have imminent
growing increasingly interconnected tus quo (gray rectangle) for the way implications for your work prac-
and complex with cyberphysical sys- RE is performed in the digital trans- tice. We will begin each section by
tems even sensing and actuating in formation era. describing what has changed in the
the physical world. Typical computer, You have probably noticed a shift world and how RE needs to adapt.
tablet, and smartphone users include in how your company is doing busi- Then we will paint a picture of how
anyone from children to the elderly. ness. Some companies experience RE could function from the perspec-
A single software product can now stronger dependency on other com- tive of a requirements engineer be-
easily reach audiences of millions panies or have the actual need to fore we discuss the hurdles that still
with unprecedented opportunities to cocreate an ecosystem with other need to be overcome.
obtain feedback. companies. You may also have found
The techniques that have so far that your product’s end users have Cross-Domain and Open RE to
proven crucial for eliciting require- changed or that they have changed Shape Software Ecosystems
ments do not hold up to the para- the way in which they communicate In all domains, we see a rapidly
digm shifts that have taken place. with you or others about your prod- growing demand by companies to
Consequently, we argue that require- uct. Perhaps you have worked on form partnerships with other com-
ments engineering (RE) will have projects in which you needed to elicit panies in software ecosystems to
to evolve in several dimensions and requirements from stakeholders in offer innovative digital solutions
unusual ways. Any of these observa- and thereby expand their business. 2
Digital Object Identifi er 10.1109/MS.2018.2883876
tions may be an indication that your Through orchestrated cooperation,
Date of publication: 22 February 2019 business is in need of ubiquitous RE. partners from different business
36
8 I E E E S O January
F T W A R2020
E | P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E I E E E CPublished
OMPUTE byRthe
SO IEEE
C I E Computer
TY Society 0 7 4 0 - 72469-7087/20
4 5 9 / 1 9 © 2 0 1©
9 I E2020
E E IEEE
REQUIREMENTS
From Geographic
From Dealing With One Collocation
Domain at a Time
To Worldwide
RE Distribution
To Dealing With
Everywhere
Multiple Domains
From Wishing for
Experienced End
Cross- RE With Users
Domain RE Everyone To Empowering
Newbies
Ubiquitous
RE
From Focusing on
From Wishing for Software
Well-Understood
To Holistically Taking
Processes RE for
Open RE Into Consideration
Everything
To Accepting People, Things, and
Openness Services
Automated
RE From Direct Interaction With
Legend:
Representative End Users
Gray Rectangles: Barriers
Colored Boxes: Required Transformations To Indirect Interaction With a
Circles: Dimensions of Ubiquity Crowd
FIGURE 1. The six dimensions of RE ubiquity.1
sectors and different domains can or at least their contributions to the the inherent openness of software
provide high-level services that go ecosystem may still be unclear. ecosystems. Requirement engineers
far beyond their current and in- Requirements engineers have used must be capable of fostering the si-
dividual offerings. New business glossaries, domain concepts, and multaneous shaping of business and
models and processes arise in sce- domain-relevant processes to famil- software and be able to deal with un-
narios where business and techni- iarize themselves with new business certainty. The skills of requirements
cal solutions influence each other domains and facilitate a shared un- engineers need to shift from being
and therefore must be shaped at the derstanding among project stake- able to elicit and represent knowledge
same time. A good example is the holders. Some have been switching and requirements obtained from do-
agricultural domain, which is being among domains rather than special- main experts to being able to connect
influenced by technologies based on izing in one domain or subdomain. businesses and propose requirements
the Internet of Things and big data These practices can help with the to domain experts. In this sense, a re-
and where the interplay of farming shaping of cross-domain ecosystems, quirement engineer acts instead as a
equipment manufacturers, chemical but they do not suffice; requirements business transformer.3
industry, insurance companies, and engineers must be capable of fostering Cross-domain and open RE starts
farm management providers creates connections among several business with the identification of key eco-
new cross-domain software ecosys- domains. In a similar way, adopting system partners, which are concrete
tems. For planned and even for ex- an incremental life cycle or an agile organizations interested in being
isting software ecosystems, several development approach can help but part of the software ecosystem. A
partners might still be unknown, does not suffice when dealing with requirements engineer is part of an
www.computer.org/computingedge M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 1 9 | I E E E S O F T WA R E 37
9
REQUIREMENTS
ecosystem leadership team, which partners, 2) models and visualiza- of motivational techniques to boost
also includes an integration archi- tions to provide different ecosystem the generation of user feedback. 5
tect, an experience designer, and views on different levels and from Together, these approaches address
others. This team seeks to make the different perspectives, and 3) means typical problems experienced in RE,
design of the software ecosystem as to support a continuous change pro- including engaging a high number
tangible as possible. As a business cess based on runtime monitoring of of stakeholders, prioritizing require-
transformer, the requirements en- emergent behavior. ments reliably, and refining coarse-
gineer plans workshops where the grained requirements.
key partners play with alternative Automated RE When automation is employed in
physical representations of the eco- to Exploit User Feedback RE, the role of the requirements engi-
system to find out how business Software is a commodity for virtually neer resembles that of a data analyst.
flows can take better advantage of everyone. There is hardly any business No direct interaction with end us-
the assets of the ecosystem partners area that is devoid of any software ers takes place to elicit requirements.
and ensure benefits to the overall support whatsoever. On the flip side Rather, the requirements engineer gets
ecosystem. Based on their knowl- of software having become this wide- to see the results of automated analyses
edge of all involved domains, the spread in both business-to-consumer conducted over user feedback, which
requirements engineers also make and business-to-business settings, it should produce information about
assumptions and invent require- has become hard to involve the enor- requirements, and can then make de-
ments, as the domain experts do not mous pool of stakeholders, let alone cisions accordingly. A company can
know yet how to transform their elicit requirements from a represen- obtain such data from all their com-
business models into an innovative tative subset to build software that munication channels (e.g., social me-
software ecosystem. Due to the in- meets all users’ expectations and dia, review sites, bug trackers, and
herent complexity, requirements en- needs. This is especially true for a customer relationship management
gineers always select a small subset heterogeneous user base, whose re- systems) and from the software prod-
of the ecosystem as the scope and quirements are likely to be even more uct itself (e.g., log data, built-in feed-
test their assumptions and proposed divergent. Moreover, companies have back mechanisms). Because such user
requirements in short feedback cy- to deal with increasingly diverse, feedback has been shown to be a fruit-
cles, either at the conceptual level or complex, and large software systems, ful source of opinions and require-
by using simulation or prototypes. while the demand for fast innovation ments, text mining and usage mining
During the whole process, they align calls for short feedback loops. approaches automatically extract re-
the key ecosystem partners in several Traditional requirements elicita- quirements and relevant information
dimensions: social, business, techni- tion techniques, such as interviews from such data. To improve the inter-
cal, and legal. or focus groups, have scalability pretability and validity of the results,
Currently, only a few methods problems. They stretch the limitation requirements engineers could employ
and tools suppor t the shaping of of resources when performed with crowdsourcing techniques to manu-
a software ecosystem (see Villela more than a few dozen people and ally assess user feedback (e.g., rating
et al.,1 Section VI.B, for a review). if they need to be performed con- or annotating sentences or validating
To provide some guidance to re- tinuously to keep up with the com- analysis results).
quirements engineers, we are design- petition. Besides, they are typically CrowdRE is gaining traction;
ing a framework of decisions that best suited for collocated settings. practitioners are interested in the
needs to be made to shape a planned Approaches for dealing with large topic, and the body of research on
ecosystem together with a workflow crowds of users typically make RE automated user feedback is growing.
of activities that indicate the time scalable by using new communica- However, mining techniques and
for making those decisions.4 How- tion mechanisms and (big data) ana- classification algorithms have only
ever, we additionally see the need lytics. We introduced the paradigm been adapted to RE recently and
for 1) techniques that support the of crowd-based requirements engi- need to be further refined to pro-
ideation of the ecosystem business neering (CrowdRE), which involves vide reliable results without requir-
and the performance of quick vali- automated gathering and analysis ing much additional manual work.
dation rounds with key ecosystem of user feedback, as well as the use What makes automatic analyses
38
10 I E E E S O F ComputingEdge
T W A R E | W W W. C O M P U T E R . O R G / S O F T W A R E | @ I E E E S O F T WA R E January 2020
REQUIREMENTS
especially difficult is the inherent
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ambiguity of unstructured user feed-
back. Moreover, companies still ne- KARINA VILLELA is a senior researcher at the Fraunhofer Insti-
glect most of the communication tute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE, where she leads
channels they have in use, while re- the requirements engineering team. Her research interests include
search has focused on public com- the trend towards ubiquitous requirements engineering, software
munication channels. Thus, there ecosystems, and variation management. Villela received a Ph.D.
is potential to assess a greater spec- in computer science from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
trum of feedback channels, including Contact her at karina.villela@iese.fraunhofer.de.
feedback about competitor products.
CrowdRE’s ultimate goal is not only
to identify requirements-relevant ex- EDUARD C. GROEN is a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for
pressions within user feedback but Experimental Software Engineering IESE. His research interest is
also to suggest written requirements deriving requirements from natural-language texts through CrowdRE.
and perform quality checks on those Groen received an M.S. in psychology, with a specialization in engi-
quasi-requirements. neering psychology, from the University of Twente and is pursuing
his Ph.D. in computer science at Utrecht University. Contact him at
RE With Everyone to Support eduard.groen@iese.fraunhofer.de.
the Expression of Needs
or Wishes JOERG DOERR is the head of the Information Systems division at
Software was traditionally devel-
the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE
oped for users who were famil-
and a lecturer at the University of Kaiserslautern. His research inter-
iar with computers or whose tasks
est is software engineering for information systems, focusing on
would be supported by the software.
requirements engineering, especially nonfunctional requirements.
Now that digital transformation
Doerr received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of
impacts society as a whole, digital
Kaiserslautern. He is a member of the German Informatics Society.
solutions affect everyone. 6 Solu-
Contact him at joerg.doerr@iese.fraunhofer.de.
tions designed to address societal
issues, for example, in smart cities
or smart rural areas, are intended
to be used by people with different
interests, skills, and backgrounds.
This includes elderly people who
have no special technological affi n- Now that digital transformation
ity and may be hard to reach due to
their fear of having digital solutions impacts society as a whole, digital
forced upon them. Other settings re- solutions affect everyone.
quire inclusive approaches—for ex-
ample, when designing solutions for
people with mental or social impair-
ments (e.g., severe forms of autism).
RE traditionally relies on techniques require end users who are intrinsi- needs based on their interests, skills,
that assume stakeholders are able cally motivated and possess collab- and backgrounds.
to express and reflect on their re- orative skills. However, to ensure With the demand for inclusive
quirements, mostly verbally, or can the expected societal or social im- approaches, requirements engineers
recognize that a particular solution pact of a digital solution, require- need to carefully plan their RE
(e.g., a prototypical implementation) ments engineers are increasingly approach to ensure that the RE meth-
meets their needs. Even more recent faced with the challenge of engaging ods fit the end users’ characteristics.
techniques, such as design thinking, end users and understanding their To do so, existing RE methods need
www.computer.org/computingedge M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 1 9 | I E E E S O F T WA R E 39
11
REQUIREMENTS
to be characterized according to as- need to be shared so others can Int. Requirements Engineering Conf.
pects that are relevant for actively learn about which method is suit- (RE 18), pp. 205–216.
engaging end users in RE activities, able for a particular stakeholder 2. S. Jansen, S. Brinkkemper, and M.
such as duration, frequency, location, group. Overall, requirements engi- A. Cusumano, Software Ecosystems:
and degree of interactivity. Require- neers need to make an effort to see Analyzing and Managing Business
ments engineers can then characterize eye to eye with the stakeholders on Networks in the Software Industry,
end users according to aspects, such a social level, whether by talking to Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar
as their domain knowledge, attitude villagers at the market or engaging Publishing, 2013.
toward IT, overall motivation, and in one-on-one sessions with a men- 3. S. Hess, J. Knodel, M. Naab, and
temporal availability and select RE tally impaired person under thera- M. Trapp, “Engineering roles for
methods that fit the characteristics of peutic guidance. constructing ecosystems,” in Proc.
10th European Conference on Soft-
ware Architecture Workshops, 2016,
pp. 24–28.
4. K. Villela, S. Kedlaya, and J. Dörr,
Overall, requirements engineers need “An approach to requirements en-
gineering for software ecosystems,”
to make an effort to see eye to eye in Proc. Requirements Engineering:
with the stakeholders on a social level. Foundation for Software Quality
(Essen 2019), to be published.
5. E. C. Groen et al., “The crowd in
requirements engineering: The land-
scape and challenges,” IEEE Softw.,
a specific group of end users. Their Working Together vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 44–52.
choices may lead to new methods be- To respond to the challenging de- 6. C. Ncube and S.-L. Lim, “On
ing introduced, or to existing ones mands of digital transformation, RE systems of systems engineering: A
being employed or adapted. will have to become ubiquitous in Requirements engineering perspective
Involving end users as “cocre- several dimensions, with the role of and research agenda,” in Proc. 26th
ators” of a digital solution can help the requirements engineer remain- IEEE Int. Requirements Engineer-
increase participation and accep- ing central to the success of software ing. Conf. (RE 18), pp. 112–123.
tance by specific groups. However, products. To achieve this goal, fur- 7. J. Salminen, S. Konsti-Laakso,
it is necessary to offer informal set- ther applied research will be needed M. Pallot, B. Trousse, and B. Senach,
tings in which they can feel comfort- to address the practical implications “Evaluating user involvement within
able collaborating. The so-called and actual needs of industry and living labs through the use of a
Living Lab approach7 might provide society. Practitioners are invited to domain landscape,” in Proc. 17th
solutions to this challenge, but the embrace the need for change and Int. Conf. Concurrent Enterprising,
motivation to actively participate in to provide insights into what they 2011, pp. 1–10.
RE or to even show up still remains can contribute as well as what their
a challenge. The incorporation of needs are. Only through close col-
gamification principles and factors laboration among research, society, This article originally appeared in
that enhance motivation, such as and industry can the hurdles that IEEE Software, vol. 36, no. 2, 2019.
external stimuli or incentives, so- currently still prevent true RE ubiq-
cial interaction, and the assignment uity be overcome.
of tasks and responsibilities, needs
to be investigated. There are only a References
Access all your IEEE Computer
few studies that report on how they 1. K. Villela et al., “Towards ubiqui- Society subscriptions at
applied cocreation and approaches tous RE: A perspective on require- computer.org
such as Living Labs in settings with ments engineering in the era of digital /mysubscriptions
high social impact. Such experiences transformation,” in Proc. 26th IEEE
40
12 I E E E S O F ComputingEdge
T W A R E | W W W. C O M P U T E R . O R G / S O F T W A R E | @ I E E E S O F T WA R E January 2020
DEPARTMENT: IOT NEWS
The IoT and Digital

Transformation: Toward
the Data-Driven Enterprise
Alexander A. Pflaum Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are transforming
Fraunhofer Center for
Applied Research on Supply the focus of business processes from physical
Chain Services SCS and products to data-driven services. The authors
Otto-Friedrich University of
Bamberg propose a reference process for digital transformation
of the company that goes beyond traditional
Philipp Gölzer
Fraunhofer Center for technology-driven approaches that solely focus on
Applied Research on Supply
the identification, specification, and implementation of
Chain Services SCS
IoT solutions to also include a strategy-driven
Editor:
Florian Michahelles approach that takes into account complementary
florian.michahelles@
technologies and innovations, considers potential
siemens.com
barriers to digital transformation, and develops
suitable countermeasures.
Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have been with us for a while. During the last two decades,
many researchers have made successful advances in smart products, communication protocols
and systems, middleware and integration platforms, architectures, and applications. Scientific
journals as well as management magazines profile cutting-edge IoT developments. However,
less attention has been given to the IoT’s economic impact.1 This article aims to reduce this gap
and give some recommendations.
THE IOT: FROM SMART PRODUCTS TO DATA-

DRIVEN SERVICES
IoT applications are sometimes called cyber-physical systems (CPSs). While each term has dif-
ferent contexts of use, we use them interchangeably here. From an “end product” point of view,
both concepts feature physical goods with powerful embedded microelectronic systems that have
their own identity, can sense environmental parameters, determine their position, process data,
IEEE Pervasive Computing Published by the IEEE Computer Society

2469-7087/20 ©2018
January–March 2020 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer
87Society January 2020
1536-1268/18/$33.00 41
©2018 IEEE
IEEE PERVASIVE COMPUTING
make their own decisions, and communicate and cooperate with the environment directly or via
an “Internet of Services.”2
There is a large variety of IoT applications. Smart toothbrushes help keep your teeth and gums
healthy. Smart shipping containers monitor transportation processes and protect valuable items
from theft and damage. Smart machines constantly monitor their status and request maintenance
before a costly breakdown. Smart vehicles such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs)—robots
that autonomously move materials in a warehouse—communicate and coordinate production
supplies efficiently. Although “smart” products are at the heart of IoT applications, in most cases
the full applications require complementary innovations: smart products and CPSs are combined
with other technologies such as cloud and mobile computing, digital social networks, and data
analytics. The key insight from a management perspective is that the source of innovation does
not lie within a single technology; it is the fusion of different technologies that drives innovative
IoT solutions. Apps are orchestrated by combining micro services on digital platforms in the
cloud and downloaded onto smartphones and other smart products. These, in turn, create data
and deliver it to the web and, vice versa, use data provided by the web for their own purposes.
The integration of different technologies leads to a new system enabling innovative and formerly
unthinkable data-driven services.
TOWARD THE DATA-DRIVEN ENTERPRISE: A

CHALLENGE FOR MANAGEMENT
From an innovation management perspective, the main goal behind implementing IoT solutions
is the transformation of the traditional product-oriented enterprise into its data-driven counter-
part. Eventually, the comprehensive implementation of IoT solutions equates to the digitization
of the company. CPSs enhance the granularity and the quality of a firm’s data pool. Once trans-
lated into knowledge, data enables new service offerings and creates new turnover potential. The
question is how to monetize this potential. The activities of digitization pioneers reveal two dif-
ferent strategies. On one hand, a company can turn a physical product into its smart equivalent,
embed it into a smart service, develop a suitable business model, and sell it to the market to
make additional money. On the other hand, the same company can use smart products from the
market to optimize its own production processes and make them more efficient and agile. The
Germany-based company Schaeffler, for instance, follows both strategies. It offers smart ball
bearings that can monitor temperature, vibration, and lubrication. These smart ball bearings are
then integrated into machine tools. The machine tools are in turn used to produce the smart bear-
ings themselves. The underlying process of digital transformation is complex and has to be care-
fully managed.
A STRUCTURED PROCESS FOR DIGITAL

TRANSFORMATION
Digital transformation in industry has typically followed a technology-driven “bottom-up” ap-
proach. First, innovation teams within companies are coached in all aspects of digitization tech-
nologies and their applications. These teams then identify potential use cases and work on the
corresponding solution specifications. Next, the use cases are assessed with regard to both tech-
nical feasibility and the economic benefits to the company and are ranked within an implementa-
tion roadmap. This approach requires a profound understanding of digitization technologies as
well as the firm’s processes. If not all knowledge is available inside the company, external ex-
perts can be involved.
One might assume that during subsequent implementation there would be no major barriers to
overcome. Unfortunately, experience suggests the process is surprisingly challenging. Internal IT
departments, for instance, are often too focused on keeping operational systems running and
have problems with the innovative character of CPS-based solutions. Use cases are frequently
not implemented because cost–benefit analyses are difficult and investment in the necessary IT
infrastructure is considered too expensive. Data scientists and other specialists are not commonly
42
January–March 2018 ComputingEdge 88 January 2020
www.computer.org/pervasive
IOT NEWS
available in a company, and the competition for such talent is fierce—hence, quickly finding
qualified staff is difficult. Finally, the maturity of digitization technologies is often either over-
or understated.
Digital transformation affects a firm’s strategy, its offerings, the IT infrastructure, the way to col-
laborate with partners, its organizational structure, overall process organization, and core compe-
tences, as well as the overall company culture at the time.3 The potential for things going wrong
is therefore high. Consequently, the bottom-up approach alone is insufficient to successfully
transform a company.
Equally important is a strategy-driven or “top-down” approach that helps to avoid the difficulties
mentioned above, as well as to speed up the process. Here, the company first develops a strategic
vision of the data-driven version of the enterprise to identify potential barriers and to initiate
countermeasures. For this, instruments are needed to identify, structure, and handle upcoming
barriers that might arise during the transformation process. For example, maturity models meas-
uring the degree of digital transformation3 are commonly used as a tool to determine the firm’s
position in the transformation process and to indicate potential problems and corresponding
countermeasures.
Ultimately, the top-down and the bottom-up approaches must be combined to solve the digital
transformation problem. To accomplish this, we propose the four-step iterative process shown in
Figure 1.
Figure 1. Proposed four-step reference process for digital transformation of companies.

(Source: Fraunhofer Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS)
The process starts with a Business Strategy step—the creation of a strategic business vision for
the data-driven enterprise. This vision must then be broken down into business initiatives and a
set of data-driven use cases that support business strategies and goals. Setting the correct frame-
work conditions of the IT infrastructure, partnering network, organization, human resources, in-
novation culture, and so on require a digital maturity assessment to avoid friction losses during
implementation itself. Potential use cases must then be evaluated and prioritized as to business
value, data accessibility, and implementation feasibility. The most promising use case can then
be implemented (“application”).
January–March 2018 89 43
IEEE PERVASIVE COMPUTING
In the next step of the digital transformation process, Knowledge Creation, a data model is first
developed that includes all information necessary to solve the core problem behind the use case
(“model”). This model is then populated with data coming from different sources inside and out-
side the company.
Next, in the Knowledge Application step, companies use AI techniques to get new insights and
knowledge from this data and to derive use case–specific solutions (“forecasting, optimization”).
Methods and algorithms used in this context usually come from statistics, mathematics, and ma-
chine learning and must be integrated into a technical solution corresponding to the given use
case. Implementation of models in applications such as a standard procurement system (SPS), a
manufacturing execution system (MES), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) can create new
business value for the firm.
In the last step, Decision-Making Process, company management must decide how to integrate
the data-driven solution into the organizational decision processes (“specification”). The vision,
as well as the roadmap, can then be revised and the framework conditions adapted before the
next use case is selected. Each implementation gets one step closer to the vision of the data-
driven enterprise.
EFFECTS ON THE BUSINESS MODEL

Our own extensive consultancy experience as well as discussions with numerous industry ex-
perts have taught us that the realization of smart products and the re-
lated digital transformation of a company will fundamentally change
the company’s business model.4
The value proposition of a data-driven enterprise differs significantly:
whereas previously the firm offered only a “dumb” physical product,
The realization of
it is now creating value from data and selling data embedded into
smart products and
smart services.5 The physical product recedes into the background,
and the company stops being a traditional manufacturer and starts be- the related digital
coming a service provider.6–7 The market side of the business model is
also subject to significant changes. The product is no longer sold as an transformation of a
investment good but as a service. The payment model changes from a
one-off payment to a continuous cash flow based on as-a-service con- company will
cepts. The market is growing because, thanks to the pay-as-a-service
model, even small and medium-size companies can now afford the fundamentally
formerly too-expensive good. The customer is now much more in-
volved in the development of services, as well as in the value-creation change the
process, thus fundamentally changing the character of a company’s re-
lationship with its customers. Even the resource side of the business company’s
model looks different now: the key activity is turning data into value.
Digital platforms8 are needed to handle the data created and used by business model.
smart products. Cost structures are changing because the firm has to
establish comprehensive service processes. Additionally, organiza-
tional units focusing on the firm’s digital transformation have to be set
up. And, finally, cooperation models are changing. The company has
to recognize that the traditional buyer–seller relationships are disappearing and that it is part of a
complex business ecosystem where companies are partners and largely cooperate at eye level.9
CONCLUSION
Smart products, which are at the heart of the IoT, will drive the future digital transformation of
companies and radically change their business model. The implementation of smart products and
corresponding data-driven services must be carefully managed due to its game-changing charac-
ter. Based on our own experience with consultancy projects as well as discussions with digitiza-
tion experts, we developed an iterative reference process for digital transformation that is
currently being used and evaluated in various industry and research projects carried out by the
44
January–March 2018 ComputingEdge 90 January 2020
IOT NEWS
Fraunhofer Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS in Nuremberg, Ger-
many. Of course, depending on a given company’s situation, not all of our recommendations and
process steps might be necessary.
Beyond developing the process itself, we have also gained three important insights. First, it is
essential that companies first create a vision for their own data-driven enterprise and then align
their goals with the process’s various activities. Second, digital transformation is a race against
time; it is necessary to establish a digitization department as well as a supporting business eco-
system in order to move fast, avoid mistakes, and be efficient. Third, we believe that fundamen-
tal change within individual enterprises as well as the industry at large can only occur with an
open innovation culture, requiring new types of skills in both data science and service system
engineering.
REFERENCES
1. M.E. Porter and J.E. Heppelmann, “How Smart, Connected Products are Transforming
Competition,” Harvard Business Rev., vol. 92, no. 11, 2014, pp. 64–88.
2. C. Klötzer and A. Pflaum, “Cyber-Physical Systems as the Technical Foundation for
Problem Solutions in Manufacturing, Logistics and Supply Chain Management,” Proc.
5th Int'l Conf. Internet of Things (IoT 15), 2015; doi.org/10.1109/IOT.2015.7356543.
3. C. Klötzer and A. Pflaum, “Toward the Development of a Maturity Model for
Digitalization within the Manufacturing Industry’s Supply Chain,” Proc. 50th Hawaii
Int'l Conf. System Sciences (HICSS 17), 2017, pp. 4210–4219.
4. A. Osterwalder and Y. Pigneur, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for
Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, Wiley, 2010.
5. H. Kagermann, “Change through Digitization—Value Creation in the Age of Industry
4.0,” Management of Permanent Change, Springer, 2017.
6. V. Eloranta and T. Turunen, “Seeking Competitive Advantage with Service Infusion:
A Systematic Literature Review,” J. Service Management, vol. 26, no. 3, 2015, pp.
394–425.
7. H. Gebauer, E. Fleisch, and T. Friedli, “Overcoming the Service Paradox in
Manufacturing Companies,” European Management J., vol. 23, no. 1, 2005, pp. 14–
26.
8. M.W. Van Alstyne, G.G. Parker, and S.P. Choundary, “Pipelines, Platforms, and the
New Rules of Strategy,” Harvard Business Rev., vol. 94, no. 4, 2016, pp. 54–60.
9. M. Papert and A. Pflaum, “Development of an Ecosystem Model for the Realization of
Internet of Things (IoT) Services in Supply Chain Management—A Grounded Theory
Study,” Electronic Markets, vol. 27, no. 2, 2017, pp. 175–189.
10. C. Frankenberger, T. Weiblen, and O. Gassmann, “Network Configuration, Customer
Centricity, and Performance of Open Business Models: A Solution Provider
Perspective,” Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 42, no. 5, 2013, pp. 671–682.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alexander A. Pflaum is director of the Fraunhofer Center for Applied Research on Supply
Chain Services SCS and a professor of supply-chain management at Otto-Friedrich Univer-
sity of Bamberg. Contact him at alexander.pflaum@scs.fraunhofer.de.
Philipp Gölzer is director of the Machine Learning and Optimization Group at the Fraun-
hofer Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS. Contact him at
philipp.goelzer@scs.fraunhofer.de.

IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 17, no. 1, 2018.
January–March 2018 91 45
Department: Internet-of-Things
Editor: Amit Sheth, amit@knoesis.org
Extending Patient-Chatbot
Experience with Internet-of-
Things and Background
Knowledge: Case Studies
with Healthcare Applications
Amit Sheth Saeedeh Shekarpour
Kno.e.sis-Wright State University University of Dayton
Hong Yung Yip
Kno.e.sis-Wright State University
& THE TRANSITION TOWARDSpersonalized health health conditions such as sleep apnea and heart
management requires public awareness about rhythm disorder. However, to make more sense
management strategies of self-monitoring, self- of IoT data, it is imperative that we develop cogni-
appraisal, and self-management, eventually pav- tive approaches where they mine, interlink,
ing a way to more timely interventions and higher and abstract diverse IoT data. These cognitive
quality patient–clinician interactions.1 A key approaches often needs to keep the user closely
enabler is patient generated health data, fueled in engaged to acquire more information, to obtain
good part by the growth in wearable devices feedback, to collect verbal health conditions, and
including smart watches and other Internet-of- to provide intervention and management actions.
Things (IoT) for health-tracking (http://bit.ly/ The chatbot technology was initially intro-
smart-wearables). These tracking devices produced as an artificial conversational agent
vide “low-level” monitoring signals indicating to simulate conversations with a user using
voice or text interactions (http://bit.ly/chatbot-
communication).2 Its market is projected to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIS.2019.2905748 reach $1.23 billion by 2025 (http://bit.ly/chatbot-
Date of current version 19 September 2019. market). If this technology is equipped with
1541-1672 2019 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society IEEE Intelligent Systems
46
Figure 1. A healthcare assistant bot interacts with the patient via various conversational interfaces (voice,
text, and visual) to disseminate information and provide recommendation (validated by physician). The core
functionalities of the chatbot (Component C in the blue box) are extended with a background HKG
(Component A in the green box) and an evolving PHKG (Component B in the orange box).
cognitive capabilities and additionally fed by contextualization, personalization, and abstrac-

continuous stream of IoT data, it can accelerate tion1 with the use of domain-specific as well as
the use of personalized health management app- patient-specific knowledge, and present examples
lications with improved clinical outcomes. of three healthcare applications.
Recently, the coalition of knowledge representa-
tion and machine learning has been the center of
attention towards a more explainable cognitive CONTEXTUAL HEALTH KNOWLEDGE
computing.3,4 For a specific domain such as GRAPH AND EVOLVING
healthcare, the chatbot technology will require PERSONALIZED KNOWLEDGE GRAPH
advanced cognitive capabilities relying on the A knowledge graph is a structured representa-
representation of background medical knowl- tion of all the involving concepts, relations, and
edge (context) and specific health conditions of entities of a given domain. One large public knowl-
patients (personalized knowledge). The incorpo- edge has been Web of Data that surpasses 149 bil-
ration of data collected from IoT and mobile lion facts collected from 9960 data sets of diverse
computing (which are often personalized data) domains (observed on October 28, 2018, at http://
into chatbot technology will enable constant stats.lod2.eu/). AI technologies can take advan-
tracking of a patient’s health condition. Further- tage of these big interlinked knowledge. In the fol-
more, it will demonstrate the advancement lowing, we first present the motivations and then
of current conversational AI capabilities for man- discuss the two key challenges faced by current
aging and mining conversations to collect evi- health systems. We describe how to augment
dence about patients and generate personalized existing health strategies by extending patient-
and contextualized inference complemented by chatbot experience that relies on three types of
knowledge extracted from multiple sources. input knowledge (see Figure 1): (i) a background
In this article, we share our perspective Health Knowledge Graph (HKG) (see Figure 1A)
on how the contemporary chatbot technology that comprises of domain and disease-specific
can be extended towards a more intelligent, knowledge which may be manually developed or
engaging, context-aware, and personalized agent. extracted from Web of Data that includes a rich
Furthermore, we underline the importance of source of structured medical and life science
July/August 2019
25 47
Internet-of-Things
data, (ii) an evolving Patient Health Knowledge of such data in better health management is
Graph (PHKG) (see Figure 1B) that incorporates likely to become more important, and chatbots
Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD) from sen- can further make it easier to collect some of the
sors and IoT devices and structured knowledge patient data such as symptoms or how a
extracted from a patient’s Electronic Medical patient feels.
Record (EMR) as well as environmental data (e.g., Contemporary implementations of chatbot
pollen, air quality) from public web services. The technologies do not understand conversation
PHKG continues to grow by expanding informative narrative and demonstrate very limited cogni-
pieces of knowledge from continuous patient tive capabilities and commonsense reasoning.
interactions with the chatbot and (iii) is refined by Handling these limitations for a broad domain
healthcare provider’s feedback (see Figure 1C) on might take years, but in a specific domain such
predictions and analytics. as health care, and even narrower applications,
such as a specific disease, these limitations can
be alleviated by extending the chatbot technol-
CURRENT HEALTHCARE ogy with domain and disease-specific health
CHALLENGES AND PROPOSED background knowledge (i.e., contextual and per-
SOLUTIONS sonalized knowledge). There are publicly avail-
Contextualization and Personalization of able generic knowledge graphs (e.g., DBpedia
Patient’s Data. The first challenge for developing and Freebase) as well as healthcare-specific
personal health agent is the need to contextual- knowledge source, e.g., unified medical lan-
ize and personalize healthcare treatments and guage system, PubMed, systematized nomencla-
decisions. Current healthcare system lacks con- ture of medicine-clinical term, and International
textual and personalized knowledge about its classification of diseases. Chatbot technology
patients3 due to the limited patient–physician can acquire a context-aware (i.e., patient’s con-
time spent during clinical visits, the patient’s text), domain-specific (i.e., health domain)
ability to recall prior events, and clinic-centric knowledge graph (extracted and integrated
system that captures only a part of relevant from external sources such as Web of Data)
patient data. Contextual factors in this instance termed HKG. The HKG can be updated and syn-
refer to a more in-depth health management chronized by the evolution of Web of Data or
and clinical protocol knowledge that a physician
relevant knowledge sources. HKG provides
may utilize, whereas personalized factors
essential facts (background knowledge) that are
include a patient’s health history, data capturing
necessary for response generation, reasoning,
patients health condition (e.g., a lab or BMI),
and inference components of chatbot engine.
ongoing activities, and lifestyle choices. A survey
The other obstacle to have a holistic overview
presented in the article by Linder et al.5 reports
of a patient’s circumstance is the lack of a uni-
several notable barriers to the effective use of
clinical decision support systems during patient fied and semantic-based approach for publishing
visits, including physician losing direct eye con- and integrating an individual patient’s data. This
tact with patients, falling behind schedule, gap hinders the health care system to provide a
inability to type quickly enough, and feeling that comprehensive history and insight about
using the computer in front of the patient is patients. To tackle this deficiency, we propose
rude. It concludes that EMRs have mixed effec- to publish a knowledge graph out of anony-
tiveness for supporting decision-making of mized patient data that is collected from vari-
physicians since exploring them is not reason- ous sources (knowledge collected from EMR,
ably agile to derive effective knowledge.4 These IoTs devices, and external web services). PHKG
factors can potentially lead to missing patients’ further integrates knowledge extracted from
data and likely to affect other healthcare profes- previous conversations of patients with chatbot.
sionals who utilize these data. On the bright To sum up, having two background knowledge
side, patients are increasingly using technology graphs (see Figure 1) to feed the core chatbot
(e.g., wearables) and using mobile applications engine will enhance reasoning and prediction in
to generate what is termed PGHD. Incorporation support of improving health decision making.
48
26 ComputingEdge
IEEE Intelligent Systems
January 2020
LIMITED PATIENT HEALTH DATA DUE humidity, and temperature) using Foobot, an
TO EPISODIC VISITS AND TIME indoor air quality monitor; (c) outdoor allergens
CONSTRAINTS and air quality recorded using web services
The American Academy of Family Physicians (ozone, pollen, and air quality); and (d) selected
(AAFP) defines primary care as promoting effective data semi-automatically (human validation with
communication and encouraging the role of the strict anonymization) extracted from patient’s clin-
patients as partner in healthcare. During clinical ical notes (from EMRs). A total of 110 evaluations
visit, the primary care physician assumes the pri- in this 150þ planned completed pediatric asthma
mary contact of patients for diagnosing a wide patient cohort study have been completed, each
range of illnesses and injuries, counselling, and lasting one or three months of participation. A
education as well as initiating preventative care. compliance rate of 89% (defined as over 75% of
They are also responsible for making referrals to data requiring active patient participation) shows
specialists according to the patient’s condition. the user acceptance of such a technology. The
This is a task of significant responsibility since a total number of data points collected per patient
patient may endure prolonged suffering in case of per day is up to 1852 over 29 types of parameters.
a wrong referral. However, with increasing societal All data are anonymized and securely backup on
demand to healthcare resources, a significant per- the Kno.e.sis cloud. These data are integrated
centage of physicians reported that they ran out together using a visualization and analysis plat-
of consultation time to converse and accurately form, kHealthDash (http://bit.ly/kHealthDash).
diagnose the root cause of patients’ conditions
(http://bit.ly/clinical-challenges). Consequently,
ARCHITECTURE OVERVIEW OF A
some patients are being deprived of education
HEALTH CHATBOT
about their health conditions, causes, available
Content, user interface, and user feedback are
treatments, and education (such as on lifestyle
three major components that go hand-in-hand in
changes). This indicates a worrisome gap in col-
creating a positive user experience which is a criti-
lecting, managing and analyzing patient’s health
cal for defining the relationship a user has with a
data as well as a proper mechanism for educating,
chatbot. Having the chatbot’s core functionalities
advising, and referring patients. extended with HKG and PHKG help contextualize
Mobile devices and IoTs are increasingly preva-
and personalize conversations. However, without
lent with overall improved technology literacy
an equally strong frontend communication system
among populations. They can hence be leveraged
to (a) receive user input and (b) articulate smart
for continuous real-time tracking of patient health
responses by (c) making intelligent inferences and
signals. These signals can help in bridging the
prediction, user interest and experience may
information gap between each hospital visit and
decline and diminish over time (http://bit.ly/why-
providing just-in-time adaptive interventions.6 For
chatbots-fail). The six core components of the
example, a joint project between Kno.e.sis and
chatbot (see Figure 1C) each represents a
Dayton Children’s Hospital has developed knowl-
research problem: conversation management, nat-
edge-enabled semantic multi-sensory approach
ural language (narrative) understanding, response
for personalized pediatric asthma management
generation, knowledge extraction and discovery,
(kHealth, http://bit.ly/kHealth-Asthma).7 The
reasoning and inference engine, and prediction
kHealth-Asthma kit represented in Figure 2 con-
module. The following are the proposed exten-
sists of an Android application that asks contex-
sions to the current state-of-the-art approaches to
tual questionnaire (tailored to specific conditions
improve patient experience in using a chatbot.
of the user) to capture symptoms and medication
usage. It also uses IoT and Web Services to collect (a) Receive and understand user input: A chatbot
patient’s and patient relevant relevant data includ- should be sufficiently dynamic to communi-
ing (a) physiological data captured via Fitbit (activ- cate with patients via multiple input and out-
ity and sleep) and Peak Flow meter (PEF/FEV1 put modalities including voice, text, and
values); (b) indoor environmental data (particu- smart display. The chatbot should pro-
late matter, volatile organic compound, CO2, vide feedback to the user and affirm its
July/August 2019
27 49
Internet-of-Things
Figure 2. The kHealth framework with kHealth-Asthma kit, kHealth cloud (D), and kHealth Dashboard (E), showing the
frequency of data collection, the number of parameters collected, and the total number of data points collected per day per
patient (shown in dark blue). The kHealth kit components that are given to patients which collects PGHD are shown in light
blue and the outdoor environmental parameters with their sources are shown in green. All data are anonymized and
associated with respective randomly assigned patient IDs.
understanding to avoid conflict and knowl- (iii) Dynamicity and evolution. The more the
edge mis-representation. patient interacts with the chatbot, the more
(b) Generating smart responses: The responses knowledge it discovers about the patient. In
articulated by the chatbot are reasoned addition, knowledge evolves over time and
from the underlying HKG and PHKG to guar- they should be reflected on the knowledge
antee domain-specificity and contextualiza- bases (HKG and PHKG).
tion as well as personalization aspects. (iv) Balancing response granularity and volume.
The “smart” is attributed by the following The complexity of traversing the graphs
components: followed by reasoning and formulating a
(i) Comprehensible and concise. Conciseness response, either by visualization or verbal-
and comprehensibility of answers pro- ization, increases dramatically with the
foundly matter as a slight flaw could com- volume of data. Retrieving and balancing
promise reliability. an optimum amount of data, yet sufficient
(ii) Context-awareness and coherence. The for a reasonable response is critical to
chatbot should consider the patient’s con- communicate timely and effectively.
text in terms of space and time in addition (c) Inference, reasoning, and prediction. As knowl-
to the input provided. For example, if an edge evolves, both HKG and PHKG should be
asthmatic patient asks for the weather con- continuously updated to infer new insights
dition, a generic answer would be “Today (http://bit.ly/PHKG-evolution). The prediction
is fairly sunny” versus a personalized module relies on both new and historical
answer with respect to the patient’s dis- knowledge about the patient in order to infer,
ease “Today is fairly sunny. However, the reason, and make a reasonable recommenda-
ragweed pollen is a little high which does tion to assist the patient for self-management
not look too good for your health. Do and self-appraisal. The predictions are also
remain indoor as much as possible.” The continuously presented to the corresponding
latter illustrates context awareness. physicians to create situational awareness,
50
28 ComputingEdge
January 2020
and in case of an emergency condition, the leveraged and transformed into practical and
physician can be notified immediately to actionable information for both patient and
intervene. health care provider. Specifically, the patient
can access information with regards to his/her
asthma control level based on symptoms, sever-
CASE STUDIES WITH HEALTHCARE ity, and triggers for self-monitoring, all at the
APPLICATIONS convenience by conversing with the chatbot.
The first use case is major depressive disor- The third prominent use case is elderly care.
der. Depression is highly prevalent in the U.S. With improved healthcare services and ameni-
with estimated prevalence rates of 10.5% affecting ties, elder residents are becoming one of the
millions of U.S. adults (http://bit.ly/major- fastest growing cohort.9 These older adults how-
depression). Successful early identification and ever are at the highest risk for developing
intervention, albeit challenging, can lead to posi- chronic diseases such as heart failure and
tive health and behavioral improvements. A rou- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. As the
tine screening for depression by a clinician technology matures, a chatbot with consented
involves administering a Patient Health Question- access to patient–doctor profile and social infor-
naire (PHQ-9, http://bit.ly/PHQ-9) which relies mation can be delegated to match patient–doc-
heavily on patient’s ability to recall events that tor preferences, organize telehealth sessions,
occurred over the span of last two weeks. Instead, and schedule appointments by looking up the
a chatbot can directly converse with patient to doctor’s calendar. Extending with IoTs such as
collect relevant data on a continuous basis in pill’s bottle sensor, the chatbot can be made
real-time, or as an added option, a patient can smarter to remind and nudge patient of timely
consent the chatbot to use his social media con- medication intake as well as adherence to clini-
versations to indirectly assess some of the com- cian prescribed management plan. By incorpo-
ponents of PHQ-9 assessment and directly rating background geospatial and gazetteers
converse with a patient for the remaining informa- knowledge sources, it is also feasible to coordi-
tion needed for an assessment. The patient’s nate and arrange transportation service for
PHKG can represent patient’s past encounters elderly with physical disabilities and transporta-
and behavioral manifestations (optionally on tion barriers, especially in congested cities.
social media) over a substantial period of time for In conclusion, while the chatbot technology
a more accurate prognosis. In addition, a contex- is not new, we discussed how its potential can
tualized chatbot with domain knowledge can be extended with IoTs and knowledge graphs.
understand slang terms that are commonly used We further illustrated the possible health serv-
in social media such as “bupe” which refers to its ices a chatbot can intervene using three disease-
medical term “buprenorphine.” This allows a via- specific use cases. To sum up, the chatbot tech-
ble entry for a chatbot to deliver tailored psycho- nology can (i) be empowered with multisensory
therapy based on Cognitive-behavioral therapy8 capabilities through IoTs and sensors, (ii) pro-
and initiate the need for treatment intervention vide contextualized and personalized reasoning
conforming to medical protocols. capabilities grounding with domain-specific
The second use case is asthma. More than knowledge, and (iii) assist situations requiring
20.4 million people in the U.S. are diagnosed high cognitive load. These diverse potentials
with asthma in 2016 and asthma-related health- hold prodigious promising for a close future of
care costs alone are around $50 billion a year promoted healthcare approach.
(http://bit.ly/asthma-facts). In an attempt to
bridge the informational gap between episodic
patient–doctor visits, a chatbot can combine
& REFERENCES
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of IEEE, AAAI, and AAAS. He is the corresponding
L. A. Volk, and B. Middleton, “Barriers to electronic
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interventions (JITAIs) in mobile health: Key
components and design principles for ongoing health
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pp. 446–462, 2017. toward the Ph.D. degree on topics in knowledge
7. U. Jaimini, K. Thirunarayan, M. Kalra, R. Venkataraman,
graph, deep learning, and conversational AI. Contact
him at joey@knoesis.org.
D. Kadariya, and A. Sheth, “How is my child’s asthma?”
Digital phenotype and actionable insights for pediatric
Saeedeh Shekarpour is an Assistant Professor of
asthma, JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting, vol. 1, no. 2, computer science with the University of Dayton, Dayton,
2018, Art. no. e11988. OH, USA. She works on knowledge graphs and cogni-
8. K. K. Fitzpatrick, A. Darcy, and M. Vierhile, “Delivering tive computing in question answering and chatbot tech-
cognitive behavior therapy to young adults with nologies. Contact her at sshekarpour1@udayton.edu.

IEEE Intelligent Systems, vol. 34, no. 4, 2019.
52
30 ComputingEdge
January 2020
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Blockchain to the Rescue

M any tough problems facing business,

On the Origins and Variations

W e explore the origins of

Table 2. Alignment of participant roles across five blockchain systems.

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Abstract—Smart contracts turn blockchains into distributed computing platforms.

Table 1. Core characteristics of four example blockchain platforms.

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