Service-Oriented Development of Virtual Business Services

Economic theory defines services as customisable, interactive processes that providers have the potential to carry out together with clients that benefit from their effects. It is understood that service transactions are best organised by means of virtual collaborative networks, where ICT allows configuring multiple providers and processes on a per-request basis. Existing conceptual models for virtual service enterprises propose service virtualisation to allow for flexible and agile regulation and enforcement of coordination between multiple providers and clients [ZEed]. It has also been shown that business service virtualisation can be achieved by means of software service technology and existing SOA models represent virtual business service processes as eservices [ZEar]. In this paper, we present a service-oriented development lifecycle model for planning and controlling virtualised business services and we combine both parts in an enterprise architecture and methodology framework for virtual service enterprises. We substantiate this approach by means of an e-service management methodology that we have implemented as a toolset and we demonstrate its application in an e-science scenario, where we show how to manage the life-cycle of e-services for virtual laboratories.