Customization of multi-tenant learning process as a service with Business Process Feature Model

Abstract

Cloud computing has a model for utility computing that promotes on-demand scalability, flexible application deployment and reuse. It also promotes multi-tenancy for efficient resource utilization by sharing hardware and software infrastructure among multiple users. Multi-tenant applications running on a cloud infrastructure are provided to clients as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) over the network. In this context, Software product lines (SPL) promote reusable application development for product families. On the other hand, business processes of most organizations are automated to support the advanced workflow management systems. In the context of the e-learning applications, it is perfectly suitable to manage the e-learning application by automating the e-learning process to effectively manage multiple tenants’ (institutions/teachers) ever changing requirements. As the available LMSs such as Moodle, Claroline and WebCT do not satisfy all the needs of different institutions/teachers, their demand is to develop their own systems. Cloud-based applications can be modeled as Business Process-as-a-Service (BPaas) families similar to the SPL products. As SPL development techniques rely on feature models to describe the commonality and variability of family member applications, such techniques can be used to model variability in BPaas. This paper proposes a generative multi-tenant e-learning process, that utilizes Business Process Feature Model (BPFM) approach which is a combination of SPL approach and BPM approach for modeling the reconfigurable e-learning process with multi-tenancy capabilities in cloud computing (BPaas).