Report on ISDO ’00: The CAiSE*00 Workshop on “Infrastructures for Dynamic Business-to-Business Service Outsourcing”

The ISDO ’00 workshop on “Infrastructures for Dynamic Business-to-Business Service Outsourcing” [1] was held as a preconference workshop of the 12th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE *00) in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 5 and 6, 2000. C. Bussler (Netfish Technologies), M. Bichler (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration), and Y. Hoffner and H. Ludwig (IBM Zurich Research Laboratory) organised the workshop and chaired the program committee. The objective of the workshop was to provide a platform to discuss models and technologies for service outsourcing, with emphasis on the integration of the dynamic establishment, setup, and enactment of service relationships that connect the business processes of service provider and consumer businesses, thereby establishing virtual enterprises. Nowadays, many production companies integrate their procurement processes using online marketplaces and network-based supply chain management systems. However, this is not the case for the service industry. Whereas many service organisations have already automated their internal business process management (e.g. using workflow management systems or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems), service marketplaces still remain an uncommon phenomenon. The reason for this is that the integration of service sales, service enactment, and customer interaction with the service process still appears to be highly difficult. This is particularly the case where complex services, such as insurance and complex logistics, involve considerable customer interaction.