Patent ID: 8103535

Claim:
A method for determining whether an agreement for a process is fit, where the agreement relates to provisioning of information technology services, comprising: obtaining, by an apparatus, a workflow model representative of the process, wherein the process comprises a plurality of atomic sub-processes, wherein each atomic sub-process has a probability distribution of throughput, wherein the throughput of an atomic sub-process is indicative of a number of requests that the atomic sub-process is capable of processing per time unit, wherein the agreement defines contractual commitments for interactions occurring between at least two entities in accordance with the process, where the agreement relates to provisioning of information technology services; determining, by the apparatus, an overall probability distribution of throughput for the process using the probability distributions of throughput of the atomic sub-processes and the workflow model, wherein the throughput of the process is indicative of a number of requests that the process is capable of processing per time unit, wherein the determined overall probability distribution of throughput for the process is further based on a parallelization level of the atomic sub-processes, wherein the parallelization level of an atomic sub-process is indicative of a number of parallel requests that the atomic sub-process is capable of concurrently executing, where at least one atomic sub-process is characterized by a switch element, wherein the switch element is an output synchronization element that allows for choosing one of n possible outputs, wherein the switch element is unaffected by the parallelization level of the at least one atomic sub-process, wherein the switch element transforms a probability distribution of execution time for the at least one atomic sub-process by multiplying the probability distribution of execution time by a probability of choosing the one of n possible outputs; and outputting, by the apparatus, a determination of whether the agreement for the process is fit based on the determined overall probability distribution of throughput, wherein the determination of whether the agreement is fit is further based on an overall probability distribution of execution time for the process and a profit and loss function for the agreement.