All Things Techie With Huge, Unstructured, Intuitive Leaps

Process Mining, OpenStack and Possibly a New Java Framework


In my process data mining course, on the internal forums,  an OpenStack developer asked how the event logs from using OpenStack could be used in process mining.  This is how I replied:

First of all, let me congratulate you on OpenStack.  I am both a user, and I use the services of an OpenStack driven Platform-As-A-Service to host the development of my mobile apps.

I would see several potentially huge benefits if you incorporated process mining into the OpenStack platform.  For example. spammers now use virtual OpenStack concept to set up a virtual machine, do their spamming or hacking and then tear down the machine never to be seen again.  If you got a signature or a process of this activity, you could theoretically intercept it while it is happening.

Another possibility, is that every time the software does a create, an instantiation, an instant of a virtual, or anything, if you record the timestamps of these machine events, you could provide a QoS or quality of service metric, both for monitoring the cloud and for detecting limitations caused by hardware, software or middleware bottlenecks.

I can see a possibility for mis-configuration of parameters that degrade service quality, that would be picked up by a process mining that would detect missing setup steps in the process.  In other words, an arc around a required region would indicate that required steps were missing.

This course has inspired me to start working on a Java framework (maybe a PROM plugin) that operates on an independent thread (maybe in an OpenStack incarnation) that monitors activity on a server and compares it to ideal processes in real time and flags someone if a crucial process deviates from it.  I think that I could get this going in a timely fashion.

Once again, this course has opened my eyes to potential methodologies and algorithms that can be applied to non-traditional fields.

Note: PROM is an open source process mining tool. The data mining course is given by the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

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