An Evaluation Of Service Frameworks For The Management Of Service Ecosystems

A service ecosystem is a marketplace for trading services in which services are developed, published, sold and used. Service ecosystems have changed the way of service delivery and service consumption among actors/parties, who perform specific roles for the operation of the ecosystems. Such actors, being service providers, consumers, mediators and intermediaries, ensure the livelihood of the ecosystem. However, the role of the service infrastructure provider, one of the actors of the service ecosystem, is still not being explored sufficiently. The service infrastructure provider provides service infrastructures/frameworks upon which other actors of the service ecosystem operate. In this paper, an evaluation framework for the service framework is defined, which is based on the features that are required for a service ecosystem to thrive. The evaluation framework is used to evaluate three opensource service frameworks. The evaluation framework facilities the selection process of a service framework among the largely available ones.