Abstract
The advancement of web services in the last few years has spurred a number of revolutionary concepts in information technology and management including service-oriented architectures, service-oriented computing, and services science, management and engineering, which can be collectively called as “services computing.” Services computing is a new research field that goes beyond traditional computing disciplines as it includes not only architectural, programming, deployment, and other engineering issues, but also management issues such as business component modeling, business process design, and service delivery. In this paper, we provide an overview of emerging research concepts in services computing without attempting to unify them as it will take sometime for the field to become mature. In addition, we take a position that the ultimate goal of services computing is to create the necessary technological and managerial foundation to support enterprise agility. In this short paper, we give an overview of services computing, describe its relationship to enterprise agility, and discuss basic technical and managerial issues. Finally, we introduce the papers that are published in this special issue.
References
Beer, S. (1981). The brain of the firm. Chichester: Wiley.
Bell, D., de Cesare, S., Iacovelli, N., Lycett, M., & Merico, A. (2007) A framework for deriving semantic web services, Information Systems Frontier, 9(1), 69–84.
Brown, G., Kanungo, T., Carey, M., Kumar, A., Tanniru, M., & Zhao, J. L. (2005). Services Science: Services Innovation Research and Education, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, July 11–15, Orlando, Florida.
Casati, F., Shan, E., Dayal, U., & Shan, M. (2003). Business-oriented management of web services. Communications of the ACM, 46(10), 55–60 (October).
Chesbrough, H., & Spohrer, J. (2006). A research manifesto for services science. Communications of the ACM, 49(7), 35–40 (July).
Chung, J.-Y., Lin, K.-J., & Mathieu, R. (2003). Web services computing: Advancing software interoperability. In IEEE Computer Special Issue on Web Services Computing, October, pp. 35–37.
Curbera, F., Khalaf, R., Mukhi, N., Tai, S., & Weerawarana, S. (2003). The next step in web services. Communications of the ACM, 46(10), 29–34 (October).
Daniel, E. M., & Wilson, H. N. (2003). The role of dynamic capabilities in e-business transformation. European Journal of Information Systems, 4(12), 282–296.
Delphi Group (2002). BPM2002: Market milestone report. A Delphi Group White Paper, http://www.handysoft.com/products/processautomation.pdf (2002).
DeVor, R., Graves, R., & Mills, J. J. (1997). Agile manufacturing research: Accomplishments and opportunities. IIE Transactions, 29(8), 813–823.
Dietrich, B. (2006). Resource planning for business services. Communications of the ACM, 49(7), 62–64 (July).
Ferris, C., & Farrell, J. (2003) What are web services? Communications of the ACM, 46(6), 31.
Ganguly, P., Ray, P., & Lovell, N. (2000). Workflow-based approach towards distributed health care applications, Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 1, 555–558.
Gosain, S. (2007). Realizing the vision for web services: Strategies for dealing with imperfect standards, Information Systems Frontier, 9(1), 53–67.
Gottschalk, K., Graham, S., Kreger, H., & Snell, J. (2002). Introduction to web services architecture. IBM Systems Journal, 41(2), 170–177.
Hooper, M. J., Steeple, D., & Winters, C. N. (2001). Costing customer value: An approach for the agile enterprise. International Journals of Operations & Production Management, 21(5/6), 630–644.
Horn, P. (2005). The new discipline of services science, BusinessWeek, January 21, 2005.
Huhns, M. N., & Singh, M. P. (2005). Service-oriented computing: Key concepts and principles. IEEE Internet Computing, 75–81 (January–February)
Hung, P. C. K., Chiu, D. K. W., Fung, W. W., Cheung, W. K., Wong, R., Choi, S. P. M., et al. (2007). End-to-end privacy control in service outsourcing of human intensive processes: A multi-layered web service integration approach, Information Systems Frontier, 9(1), 85–101.
Keen, M., Acharya, A., Bishop, S., Hopkins, A., Milinski, S., Nott, C., et al. (2004). Patterns: Implementing an SOA Using an Enterprise Service Bus, IBM Redbooks (July).
Kreger, H. (2003). Fulfilling the web services promise. Communications of the ACM, 46(6), 29–34.
Kwak, M., Han, D., & Shim, J. (2002). A framework supporting dynamic workflow interoperation and enterprise application integration, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3766–3775.
Leymann, F., Roller, D., & Schmidt, M. T. (2002). Web services and business process management. IBM Systems Journal, 41(2), 198–211.
Little, M. (2003). Transactions and web services. Communications of the ACM, 46(10), 49–54 (October).
Madhusudan, T. (2007). A web services framework for distributed model management, Information Systems Frontier, 9(1), 9–27.
Maglio, P. P., Srinivasan, S., Kreulen, J. T., & Spohrer, J. (2006). Service systems, service scientists, SSME, and innovation. Communications of the ACM, 49(7), 81–85 (July).
McCoy, D. W., & Plummer, D. C. (2006). Defining, cultivating and measuring enterprise agility, Gartner Research (April 28).
Meredith, L. G., & Bjorg, S. (2003). Contracts and types. Communications of the ACM, 46(10), 41–47 (October).
Oaks, P., & ter Hofstede, A. H. M. (2007). Guided interaction: A mechanism to enable ad hoc service interaction, Information Systems Frontier, 9(1), 29–51.
Overby, E., Bharadwaj, A., & Sambamurthy, V. (2006). Enterprise agility and the enabling role of information technology. European Journal of Information Systems, 15, 120–131 (April).
Papazoglou, M. P., & Georgakopoulos, D. (2003). Service-oriented computing: Introduction. Communications of the ACM, 46(10), 24–28 (October).
Peltz, C. (2003). Web services orchestration and choreography. Computer, 36(10), 46–52 (October).
Rhee, S.-H., Bae, H., & Choi, Y. (2007). Enhancing the efficiency of supply chain processes through web services, Information Systems Frontier, 9(1), 103–118.
Rouse, W. B., & Baba, M. L. (2006). Enterprise transformation. Communications of the ACM, 49(7), 66–72 (July).
SCC (2005). Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Conference on Services Computing, July 11–15, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Sheehan, J. (2006). Understanding service sector innovation. Communications of the ACM, 49(7), 42–47 (July).
Sheth, A., Verma, K., & Gomadam, K. (2006). Semantics to energize the full services spectrum. Communications of the ACM, 49(7), 55–61 (July).
Spohrer, J., & Riecken, D. (2006). Introduction. Communications of the ACM, 49(7), 30–32 (July).
Stohr, E. A., & Zhao, J. L. (2001). Workflow automation: Overview and research issues. Information Systems Frontiers: Special Issue on Workflow Automation and Business Process Integration, 3(3), 281–296.
Stroulia, E., & Hatch, M. P. (2003). An intelligent-agent architecture for flexible service integration on the web. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Part C, 33(4), 468–479.
Thompson, T., Weil, R., & Wood, M. D. (2003). CPXe: Web services for Internet imaging. Computer, 36(10), 54–62 (October).
Tsai, T.-M., Yu, H.-K., Shih, H.-T., Liao, P.-Y., Yang, R.-D., & Chou, S. T. (2003). Ontology-mediated integration of intranet web services. Computer, 36(10), 63–71 (October).
Tsalgatidou, A., & Pilioura, T. (2002). An overview of standards and related technology in web services. Distributed and Parallel Databases, 12, 135–162.
Tsourveloudis, N.C., & Valavanis, K. P. (2002). On the measurement of enterprise agility. Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, 33, 329–342.
Turner, M., Budgen, D., & Brereton, P. (2003). Turning software into a service. Computer, 36(10), 38–44 (October).
Umapathy, K., & Purao, S. (2007). A theoretical investigation of the emerging standards for web services, Information Systems Frontier, 9(1), 119–134.
W3C, Web services architecture requirements, W3C Working Draft, http://www.w3c.org/TR/2002/WD-wsa-reqs-20020429, (April 29, 2002).
Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics. Wiley: New York.
Yang, J. (2003). Web service componentization. Communications of the ACM, 46(10), 35–40 (October).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhao, J.L., Tanniru, M. & Zhang, LJ. Services computing as the foundation of enterprise agility: Overview of recent advances and introduction to the special issue. Inf Syst Front 9, 1–8 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-007-9023-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-007-9023-x