ISF special issue on enterprise services computing: Evolution and challenges

With recent advances in services computing technologies and infrastructure, there are increasing demands for ubiquitous access to networked services for supporting enterprise business processes more efficiently and effectively. These services, generally known as enterprise services, extend support from Web browsers and application interfaces on personal computers to handheld devices, such as cell phones, PDAs and even IP telephony systems, over a proprietary network or the Internet. An enterprise service refers to an application component that provides either some e-business functionality or information to accomplish enterprise purposes at anytime and anywhere through Web and wireless technologies. With the advent of e-business and supply chain management concepts, an increasing demand for interoperable applications exists, which allow the real-time exchange of data across enterprise borders, across different applications and across different IT-platforms. “Enterprise Computing” encompasses a new class of ground breaking technologies such as Web services and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), business process integration and management, middleware support like utility/grid/peer-to-peer/autonomic-computing, as well as its business and scientific applications. Enterprise computing currently shapes the processes of business modeling, business consulting, solution creation, service delivery, and software architecture design, development and deployment, monitoring and management.