Web Service Ecosystems
written by gunther gerlach-2009
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has gained mainstream acceptance as a strategy for consolidating and repurposing legacy applications to be combined with new applications in more dynamic environments, through self-contained, reusable, and configurable services. As fostered through the web services standards stack, services, once in place, can interoperate with other services, be composed into long-running business processes, spanning intra- and inter-organizational boundaries, and be procured through different business domains and market sectors. As web services are exposed and connected with one another, they give rise to service ecosystems.
In these ecosystems, services are deployed, published, discovered, delivered to different business channels through specialist intermediaries (e.g., payment, authentication, and mediation services), and monitored. A groundswell of web service ecosystems is emerging on the “dotcom” front, and targeting enterprise applications for the small to medium sector. Following the successes of Amazon and eBay goods marketplaces, the first significant efforts of bringing together web services using more open procurement models are precipitating the long-anticipated internet service marketplace concept.
Published by. BPTrends November 2005
