Service Oriented Computing and Applications https://doi.org/10.1007/s11761-018-00253-7 ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER A reference model of services computing systems platform based on meta-analysis technique Novianto Budi Kurniawan 1 · Suhardi 1 · Arry Akhmad Arman 1 · Yoanes Bandung 1 · Purnomo Yustianto 2 Received: 1 December 2017 / Revised: 25 June 2018 / Accepted: 24 December 2018 © Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract The development of services computing systems requires an environment that supports service-oriented application devel- opment approach. The organized environment is referred to as platform in this paper. The lack of such generic platform is a challenge in the field. A reference model becomes a prerequisite for developing such platform in order to optimize the computing resources. This paper proposes a reference model of services computing systems platform based on the literature studies using a meta-analysis technique. The paper demonstrates a reference model development using the systematic meta- analysis technique to identify the required components of the platform and to examine the interaction between the components. Statistical tests are conducted to show the correlation between the components and to evaluate the proposed reference model. This study also discusses the different functions and areas for each layer of the proposed model. The contribution of this paper is a generic reference model of services computing systems platform based on meta-analysis technique that can be used as a guide to build the platform. Keywords Services computing · Services computing systems · Platform · Reference model · Meta-analysis 1 Introduction 1.1 Research background One of the challenges in services computing research is ser- vice design. It is a fundamental, but it is yet an unsolved research problem in services computing [1]. To improve organizational performance, service design comprehension is essential for building and developing a services com- B Suhardi suhardi@stei.itb.ac.id Novianto Budi Kurniawan noviantobudik@s.itb.ac.id Arry Akhmad Arman arman@stei.itb.ac.id Yoanes Bandung bandung@stei.itb.ac.id Purnomo Yustianto yustianto@deakin.edu 1 School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia 2 School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia puting system [1–3]. So far, a service design has not been based on a formal model of services computing systems plat- form [1,4–6]. Service integration in a large complex system often disregards a unifying services computing systems plat- form [7–10]. The need for a platform reference model is driven by highly complex and dynamic services systems. The required reference model must support the interaction and relation among services system components with diverse functionalities. Thus, the need for developing a reference model becomes one of the research challenges that must be solved in this area. In particular, some examples of services computing sys- tem platform are in the area of smart city and smart campus. Smart city and smart campus are considered as services com- puting systems that have the characteristics of a complex system. With sectoral approaches, the initiatives often forget the need for a unified system platform. This tendency can be observed in smart health [11–13], smart transportation [14– 16], smart education [17–20], smart agriculture [11,21–25], smart energy [26,27], and smart government [28–30]. These sectors introduce variability in the components and struc- tures of the system. Also, these studies use various concepts of service-oriented systems platform. Therefore, the devel- opment of smart city services requires a standard platform 123