Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Fundamentals of Service Systems pp 33–74Cite as

Electronic Services

  • Chapter

Abstract

Summary This chapter provides an overview of two streams—the automation of activities and programming paradigms—which drove and supported the evolution of electronic services. These services are service systems implemented using important elements from the fields of automation and programming. It presents several classifications to understand the nature of services according to different views. Since services can take various forms, the chapter explains and contrasts electronic services, web services, cloud services, the internet of services, and service-oriented architectures.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.ccng.com/files/public/Yankee_SelfService.pdf.

  2. 2.

    The term digital services has the same meaning as electronic services.

  3. 3.

    The White House, Building a 21st Century Digital Government, May 23, 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/2012digital_mem_rel.pdf.

  4. 4.

    http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf.

  5. 5.

    Cloud services are usually provided via SOAP or REST web services but any other technology to support and implement distributed systems can be used.

  6. 6.

    Dropbox has a software module which requires its installation in a computer to use the service to synchronize files transparently.

  7. 7.

    http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/usdl/.

  8. 8.

    http://linked-usdl.org/.

References

  1. Fuchs V (1968) The service economy. National Bureau of Economic Research, New York

    Google Scholar 

  2. Castro D, Atkinson R, Ezell S (2010) Embracing the self-service economy, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, p 103

    Google Scholar 

  3. Froehle C, Roth A (2004) New measurement scales for evaluating perceptions of the technology-mediated customer service experience. J Oper Manag 22(1):1–21. ISSN:0272-6963

    Google Scholar 

  4. Rust R, Kannan P (2003) E-service: a new paradigm for business in the electronic environment. Commun ACM 46(6):36–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Rowley J (2006) An analysis of the e-service literature: towards a research agenda. Internet Res 16(3):339–359

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. EU directive 2006/123/EC of the European parliament and of the council of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market. Technical report. European Union (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Hofacker C et al (2007) E-services: a synthesis and research agenda. J Value Chain Manag 11(2):13–44

    Google Scholar 

  8. The e-government imperative: main findings. Technical report. OECD (2003), pp 1–8

    Google Scholar 

  9. Baida Z et al (2004) A shared service terminology for online service provisioning. In: Proceedings of the sixth international conference on electronic commerce (ICEC04). ACM Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  10. Vesanen J (2007) What is personalization? a conceptual framework. Eur J Mark 41(5/6): 409–418

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bolton R, Saxena-Iyer S (2009) Interactive services: a framework, synthesis and research directions. J Interact Mark 23(1):91–104 [Anniversary Issue]

    Google Scholar 

  12. Junglas I, Watson R (2008) Location-based services. Commun ACM 51(3):65–69. ISSN:0001-0782

    Google Scholar 

  13. Anderson C (2008) The long tail: why the future of business is selling less of more. Hyperion Books, New York. ISBN:9781401309664

    Google Scholar 

  14. Public Services Online: Digital by Default or by Detour? Technical report. European Commission (2013). http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/

  15. Wheeler DJ (1952) The use of sub-routines in programmes. In: Proceedings of the 1952 ACM national meeting, p 235

    Google Scholar 

  16. Parnas DL (1972) On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules. Commun ACM 15(12):1053–1058. ISSN:0001-0782. doi:10.1145/361598.361623. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/361598.361623

  17. Papazoglou M, Georgakopoulos D (2003) Introduction: service-oriented computing. Commun ACM 46(10):24–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Simon H (1962) The architecture of complexity. Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 106(6):467–482

    Google Scholar 

  19. Booth D, McCabe F, Champion M (2004) Web services architecture—W3C working group note. Technical report

    Google Scholar 

  20. Cerami E (2002) In: Laurent SS (ed) Web services essentials, 1st edn. O’Reilly, Sebastopol. ISBN:0596002246

    Google Scholar 

  21. Berners-Lee T, Hendler J, Lassila O (2001) The semantic web. Sci Am 284(5):34–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Fielding RT (2000) Architectural styles and the design of network-based software architectures. Ph.D. thesis, University of California

    Google Scholar 

  23. Cardoso J et al (2010) Towards a unified service description language for the Internet of services: requirements and first developments. In: IEEE international conference on services computing (SCC), Florida, pp 602–609

    Google Scholar 

  24. Pedrinaci C, Cardoso J, Leidig T (2014) Linked USDL: a vocabulary for web-scale service trading. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 8465. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 68–82

    Google Scholar 

  25. Cardoso J et al (2011) IoS-based services, platform services, SLA and models for the Internet of services. In: Software and data technologies. Communications in computer and information science, vol 50. Springer, New York, pp 3–17

    Google Scholar 

  26. Chesbrough H, Rosenbloom R (2002) The role of the business model in capturing value from innovation: evidence from Xerox corporation’s technology spin-off companies. In: Social science research network working paper series, journal Industrial and Corporate Change, 11(3):529–555

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics Engineering, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Jorge Cardoso

  2. Huawei European Research Center (ERC), Munich, Germany

    Jorge Cardoso

  3. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KSRI), Karlsruhe, Germany

    Hansjörg Fromm

Authors
  1. Jorge Cardoso
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hansjörg Fromm
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jorge Cardoso .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Baixo Mondego, Portugal

    Jorge Cardoso

  2. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Hansjörg Fromm

  3. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Stefan Nickel

  4. Business Performance Services, Europe, IBM, Ehmingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Gerhard Satzger

  5. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Rudi Studer

  6. Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Christof Weinhardt

2.1 Review Section

Review Questions

  1. 1.

    ATM machines were one of the first electronic services to be developed in the late 60s. Identify other electronic services introduced in the 70s and 80s.

  2. 2.

    Use Froehle and Roth [3] classification to characterize the following services: expedia.com, booking.com, 99designs.com, redbeacon.com, lulu.com, threadless.com, odesk.com, and facebook.com. Give additional examples to cover all types of the classification.

  3. 3.

    Identify existing technology-free, -assisted, and -facilitated services which can constitute good candidates for their transformation into technology-mediated and -generated services.

  4. 4.

    Find programming examples of applications implementing the client-server model using RPC, CORBA, DCOM, and JRMI. The client–server model is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks between the service providers (requested service) and service requesters (requesting application). Contrast the benefits and difficulties of each programming techniques.

  5. 5.

    The interface of a SOAP web service is described with the specification language WSDL. Provide an example of a WSDL description of a web service with two operations: string getAddress(long custID) and setAddress(long custID, string regionID).

  6. 6.

    Which benefits can cloud services provide to businesses? What type of cost savings can be achieved? How flexible and agile are cloud services? Who typically owns the data and where it is stored?

  7. 7.

    Classify the following cloud services as SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS: lunacloud.com, scalextreme.com, cirrhus9.com, logicworks.net, cohesiveft.com, and appcore.com.

  8. 8.

    Contrast and compare web services, cloud services, and Internet of Services.

Project

This project analyzes the cost differences of deploying an on-premise physical and software infrastructure versus adopting services from a cloud computing provider. You will use the calculator provided at tco.2ndwatch.com to compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of both approaches and highlight key points when considering cost. The total cost of ownership accounts for the costs to run a software system over its lifetime. It is the best metric to compare the costs of cloud computing and on-premise software deployments. It includes the fees paid to vendors, maintenance and support, and hardware, equipment, and staff costs. The service tco.2ndwatch.com calculates the TCO of using Amazon Web Services versus running applications on on-premise infrastructures.

In a first step, select a company or organization you are familiar with (e.g., a university, library, or research center) and make a comprehensive description of its ICT needs, staff, operations, and infrastructure. Afterwards, estimate the following parameters which are used by tco.2ndwatch.com to calculate the TCO (the web site of the service provides additional information on each parameter):

  • Web application servers

  • Database servers

  • Overall storage

  • Data centers

  • Growth rate

  • Administrative overhead

  • Usage pattern

Download the report generated and examine the total expenditures for both strategic approaches. Which one is more cost-effective? What are the main reasons? What characterizes the borderline which can make one of the approaches more attractive over the other?

In a second step, use the service provided at planforcloud.com to determine which cloud provider would supply the most cost-effective solution for the company under study. What are the reasons?

In a last step, write a concise expert report with all the findings recommending to a (possible) manager the best approach to follow (cloud computing or on-premise) and, if a cloud computing approach is recommended, which cloud provider would be best suited to contract.

Key Terms

Electronic Service :

An electronic service, or shortly e-service, is a service that allows a remote interaction using information and communication technologies (ICT) such as the internet, software applications, and computing resources.

Web Service :

A web service is a technology and approach of communication which enables a software system to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network.

SOAP Service :

A SOAP service is an application-accessible web service that uses the SOAP protocol for exchanging structured information between the two parties involved, i.e., the service provider and the service client.

REST Service :

A REST service is an application-accessible web service that uses REST architectural principles and web specifications as underlying paradigms and technologies, respectively.

Cloud Service :

Cloud services are designed to provide easy, scalable access to applications and resources. They are managed by cloud service providers. Services are made available on-demand from a cloud computing provider’s servers in contrast to being provided from a company’s own on-premise servers. Popular cloud services include Google Docs (documents), Dropbox (files), and Flickr (photos).

Cloud Computing :

Cloud computing refers to the delivery of hosted services over the internet (i.e., the cloud). Services are predominantly divided into three categories: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Service-Oriented Architecture :

An architectural style and business-centric programming paradigm to develop distributed systems where systems consist of software clients, which act as service consumers, and software providers, which act as service providers.

Internet of Services :

The internet of services envisions to provide an ecosystem to foster the trading of application and human services over the internet. Beyond downloading music, ordering books, storing files remotely, and booking flights, services can also be traded as commodities.

Service Descriptions :

Service descriptions are generally formal representations of functional and non-functional characteristics of services. SOAP web services use WSDL, and electronic services can use Linked USDL for their descriptions.

Further Reading

Olaf Zimmermann, Mark Tomlinson, and Stefan Peuser. Perspectives on Web Services: Applying SOAP, WSDL and UDDI to Real-World Projects. Springer, 2013.

Leonard Richardson, Mike Amundsen, and Sam Ruby. RESTful Web APIs. O’Reilly Media, 2013.

Thomas Erl, Ricardo Puttini, and Zaigham Mahmood. Cloud Computing: Concepts, Technology & Architecture. Prentice Hall, 2013.

Jorge Cardoso and Amit Sheth. Semantic Web Services, Processes and Applications. Springer, 2006.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Cardoso, J., Fromm, H. (2015). Electronic Services. In: Cardoso, J., Fromm, H., Nickel, S., Satzger, G., Studer, R., Weinhardt, C. (eds) Fundamentals of Service Systems. Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23195-2_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23195-2_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23194-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23195-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation