http://www.opitz-consulting.com/go/3-5-11 Towards a Common Conceptual Service Description Language: A Service Property Analysis for the Internet of Services The evolution of Service-oriented Architectures (SoA) toward market places for business services in the Internet raises the need for rich service descriptions with respect to service proposition and service discovery. While SoA and Web service technology cover IT aspects, service providers face the challenge of describing services in a business-oriented fashion, including price models and payment information. However, regarding service descriptions, there is no conceptual formalism, a wide range and overlapping IT standards, and a low alignment between business and IT. This paper reports from a research project which develops a service description method that allows documenting, communicating, and reasoning about service descriptions on various levels depending on intention and abstraction. For defining a common language for describing services in a business-oriented fashion, a literature analysis of service properties was conducted in three different research domains. Finally, the paper discusses the findings and offers prospects about future work that includes a modeling language and a guideline for describing services. -- Need help or advise for SoA projects? http://www.opitz-consulting.com/go/3-5-889 (in German) About us OPITZ CONSULTING is a leading project specialist for custom-build applications and individual Business Intelligence solutions in the German market. The company's ambition is to help organizations to be better than their competitors. To achieve this OPITZ CONSULTING analyses the individual completive edge the customer has, optimizes business processes for process automation and IT-support, chooses and designs appropriate system architectures, develops and implements solutions and guarantees a 24/7 support and application maintenance. To ensure the necessary skill and qualification OPITZ CONSULTING has established a training center for customers and the internal staff. Since 1990 over 600 customers have a long lasting and successful business relationship with OPITZ CONSULTING. Over 2/3 of the German stock index (DAX) companies rely on services from the 400+ OPITZ CONSULTING consultants. OPITZ CONSULTING maintains offices in Bad Homburg, Berlin, Essen, Gummersbach, Hamburg, Munich, Nuremberg and Kraków (Poland).

1. Towards a Common Conceptual Service Description
Language: A Service Property Analysis for the
Internet of Services
Dr. Gregor Scheithauer
OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH
Germany
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

2. Märkte Kunden Leistungs- Fakten
angebot
 Java  Branchen-  IT-Strategie  Gründung 1990
 SOA übergreifend  Beratung  400 Mitarbeiter
 ORACLE  Über 600  Implementierung  8 Standorte in
 BI/DWH Kunden  Betrieb D/PL
 Outtasking  Training
Industrie / Versorger / Handel / Logistik /
Telekommunikation Dienstleistungen
29% 29%
42%
Öffentliche Auftraggeber /
Banken & Versicherungen /
Vereine & Verbände
Anforderungsanalyse und Spezifikation mit BPMN 2.0 – Dr. Gregor Scheithauer © OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH 2011 Seite 2

3. About me
• Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton, USA
– 2006 – 2007
– Research
• BPM, SOA
• BPMS Evaluation
• Siemens Corporate Technology, Munich,
Germany
– 2007 – 2010
– Research
• Service Engineering
• Service Descriptions
• Model Transformations
http://gregorscheithauer.de/publications
http://twitter.com/gscheithauer • OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH, Munich, Germany
gregor.scheithauer@opitz-consulting.com – Since 2010
– Projects
• Business Process Automation
• Enterprise Architecture
• Requirements Engineering
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

4. Motivation, problem area
• Companies‘ utilization of the Internet for offering and
procuring business services increases
– Globalization, technical change and cost pressure force companies
to concentrate on core competencies
– On the other hand, companies affiliate in order to offer holistic
business services co-operatively
• The Internet offers a platform for
– potential partner identification
– business service offering
– business service selection and usage
  Internet of Services
[Peneder et al. 2003]
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

5. Motivation, problem area
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

6. Research Objectives
• Formal descriptions support trading of Business services
over the Internet
– Difficult evaluation and comparability of business services
• Business services are intangible
• Business services are perishable
• Business services result not in ownership
• Research Objective
– Analysis of business service properties in the areas of
• Business Science, Information Systems, and Computer Science
– Consolidation of business service properties for a common
understanding
[Zeithaml & Bitner 2000]
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

7. Analysis Framework
Business Information Computer
Science Systems Science
Product Research Disciplines
Process
Lovelock and Wright, 2002
People
Service Mix (8Ps)
Physical
Evidence
Place & Time
Price
Promotion
Productivity &
Quality
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

8. Data Collection Method
• Paper selection occured during a two-year research project
about service engineering (http://www.theseus-
programm.de/en/index.php)
• Broad search expression using the following keywords:
– service properties
– service attributes
– quality of service
– service description
• Analysis of all publications with relevant information were
kept
• Investigative analysis by following references from kept
papers
• Resulting in 26 Papers
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

9. Service Property Analysis
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

10. Service Property Analysis
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

11. Service Property Analysis
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

12. Consolidated Service Properties
Product Process People Physical Evidence
• Service Product • Capability • Provider • Resource
• Classification • Standard • Consumer • Resource Type
• Terms of Use • Interface Type • Partner • Condition
• Benefit • Right
• Currency • Contract & Addr.
• Service Type • Right Type
• Automation Level
• Classification System
• Lang (ISO 639-2)
Productivity and
Place and Time Price Promotion
Quality
• Channel • Price • Test Report • Quality
• Recurrence • Transaction Cut • Rating • Dependability
• Channel Type • Pricing • Certificate • Performance
• Time Granularity • Usage-based Pr. • Discount • Throughput
• Flatrate • Payment Disc. • Latency
• Two-Part Tariff • Seasonal Disc. • Security
• N-Block-Tariff • Channel Disc. • Confidentially
• Payment Instr. • Quantitative Disc. • Data Integrity
• Price Modifier • 8Ps
• Currency • SERVQUAL
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

13. Future Work
• Build meta model for formalization
• Determine modeling notation for service description
documentation
• Conduct case studies
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

14. Meta Model - Preview
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

15. Tool Support
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

16. Conclusion and outlook
1. A motivation for a service description formalization was
given
2. A literature analysis of service properties was presented
3. The results show the current understanding of service
properties in
– Business science
– Information science
– Computer Science
1. A consolidated set of service properties was presented
2. Finally, future work was introduced
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH

17. Contact
Dr. Gregor Scheithauer
OPITZ CONSULTING München GmbH
Weltenburger Straße 4 - D-81677 München
gregor.scheithauer@opitz-consulting.com
http://member.acm.org/~scheithauer
+49 89 680098-1483
+49 173 7279433
Session 3a, 26. October 2011 eChallenges e-2011 Copyright 2011 OPITZ CONSULTING GmbH