J. Filipe and J. Cordeiro (Eds.): ICEIS 2008, LNBIP 19, pp. 15–27, 2009.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009
Service Engineering for the Internet of Services
Jorge Cardoso, Konrad Voigt, and Matthias Winkler
SAP Research CEC, Chemnitzer Strasse 48, 01187 Dresden, Germany
{jorge.cardoso,konrad.voigt,matthias.winkler}@sap.com
Abstract. The Internet and the Web have extended traditional business net-
works by allowing a Web of different digital resources to work together to cre-
ate value for organizations. The most industrialized countries have entered a
post-industrial era where their prosperity is largely created through a service
economy. There is a clear transition from a manufacturing based economy to a
service based economy. From the technological perspective, the development of
Web-based infrastructures to support and deliver services in this new economy
raises a number of challenges. From a business perspective, there is the need to
understand how value is created through services. In this paper, we describe
how we propose to address these two perspectives and realize the vision of the
Internet of Services (IoS), where Web-based IT-supported service ecosystems
form the base of service business value networks. This paper addresses the main
challenging issues that need to be explored to provide an integrated technical
and business infrastructure for the Internet of Service.
Keywords: Internet of Services, service engineering, service, e-service, web
service, business models.
1 Introduction
Throughout the years organizations have always tried to introduce new business mod-
els to gain a competitive advantage over competitors or to explore hidden markets.
For example, IKEA introduced the concept that people could transport the merchan-
dise and assemble the furniture by themselves. eBay gained an early competitive
advantage by being the first-to-market with a new business model based on auctions.
Dell was able to bypass distributors, resellers, and retailers and use the Internet to
reduce costs. In all these examples, the new or adapted business models are often
derived from the human perception that something could be done in a different way.
The idea comes very often from intuition and it is driven by a business need.
Recently, the vision of the Internet of Services (IoS) [13] emerged and can be seen
as a new business model that can radically change the way we discover and invoke
services. The IoS describes an infrastructure that uses the Internet as a medium for
offering and selling services. As a result, services become tradable goods. Service
marketplaces, where service consumers and providers are brought together to trade
services and so engage in business interaction, are an enabling technology for the IoS
vision. Thus, the IoS provides the business and technical base for advanced business
models where service providers and consumers form business networks for service