From E-Processes to E-Networks: an E-Service-oriented Approach.

Looking at the recent history of information systems, two complementary trends seem to emerge. On the one side, systems become more modular. The shift is from tight integration to loosely coupled components. On the other side, the distance between business models and information technology (IT) is shortening. Aggressive business models impose new requirements on IT. At the same time, operational capabilities made available by IT drive the definition of new business models. Web services are the most noticeable outcome of the first trend. E-services play a similar role for the second trend. In this paper, we concentrate on e-services and their relationships with the type of business processes used by e-businesses. We refer to this type of processes as e-processes. We first introduce e-services, and outline the interconnections with web services. Focusing on the composition aspects of e-processes and e-services, we then discuss potential and requirements of processlevel cooperation for composite e-service solutions. We refer to these composite solutions as e-networks. The discussion is based on our work on the DySCo (Dynamic e-Service Composer) framework for enetwork management. A brief description of the framework and the associated platform is included, together with an analysis of some of the issues related to service level agreements (SLAs) in e-networks. 1.The e-service vision Until recently, the Internet was about the creation of e-commerce systems, and it was dominated by web sites and storefronts. We have now entered the next Internet evolution: the proliferation of e-services [13]. E-services are modular, nimble, units of service made available from a business to other businesses and to consumers. Almost any business asset can be turned into an e-service and offered efficiently via the Internet. A definition: an e-service is any asset that is made available via the Internet to drive new revenue streams or create new efficiencies. Chapter 1 of the Internet was about businesses being wired to their employees, customers and partners; key business processes being linked to the Internet, and a critical mass of consumers coming online. Businesses were learning how to turn a new technology into a new business resource. Now, the Internet is ready for its next evolution. It is no longer about businesses looking at the web as a technology. The Internet has been absorbed into the core business infrastructure, and businesses can capitalise on this new asset. Chapter 2 of the Internet is about the mass proliferation of e-services. E-services come in the form of modular units, which can be combined and recombined to solve business problems and to help businesses to overcome the limitations of a static business infrastructure. Successful companies will be those capable of turning their business assets into services and deliver them via the Internet. 2.E-services and web services Since the e-service vision was proposed by Hewlett-Packard two years ago, virtually all the major players in the IT industry have aligned behind it. A number of different initiatives have emerged, all paving the way towards the full realisation of the e-service world. First of all, e-services mean openness; and openness means common standards. XML is a clear example of the impact that standards can have on open systems. Layered on top of XML, a number of standardisation efforts are building the foundation for automated business interaction. Platform-level initiatives like SOAP [1], WSDL [3], and WSFL [6] complement initiatives like BPMI [2], ebXML [4], and RosettaNet [10] at the level of business processes. UDDI is an example of the way the dynamic formation of business relationships advocated for e-services can be supported in practice. The changes advocated by e-services go beyond technology into the very structure of businesses. In chapter one of the Internet companies had to reengineer their internal processes in order to sustain webbased channels to customers. Similar if not deeper changes are required to businesses in order to take advantage of the opportunities available in chapter two. Technology is mainly instrumental to most of these changes, but it certainly represents an important catalyst. In particular, flexible IT platforms enable flexible business solutions. Web services represent an important step in this direction. Web services represent an IBM-led initiative aimed at standards for modular and open applications. The definition for web services given by the IBM web services architecture team is “... self-contained, modular applications that can be described, published, located, and invoked over a network, generally, the Web” [5]. WSDL and WSFL are among the outcomes of the web service initiative. The requirements described in the e-service model for business-level services find a clear mapping on the application-level model proposed for web services. 3.E-services and e-processes In chapter one of the Internet, the characterisation of an e-business was given in terms of the capability of a company to interact electronically with its customers. Electronic interaction meant browser-based interaction. The Internet was used as an additional channel to customers. New front-end solutions were built for internal business processes, but the back-end infrastructure of the company was left substantially unchanged. Market forces have already decided the inappropriateness of this type of business model for a number of individual cases. Learning from the (very expensive) experiments made by a number of companies, we propose a model for e-businesses based on the separation between standard processes and eprocesses [11, 14]. The successful operation of a business substantially derives from the synergy between all the processes in the company ecosystem. A distinction between internal and external processes could lead to a definition of e-processes as the external processes involving the Internet [12]. Wide enough to accommodate most of the business architectures emerged in the past, we believe that such a definition fails to recognise the internal impact of electronic interaction in general, and of the Internet in particular. A definition: an e-process is any business process sustaining the operational aspects of an Internetcentred business model. The blur in the distinction between e-processes and standard processes reflects the pervasiveness of Internet-centred business models into the structure of a company. The entire company has to align behind new e-business models, and this is the principle that we try to capture with the definition proposed for eprocesses. Far from suggesting that every process in an e-business is an e-process, our aim is to stimulate a more careful analysis of business processes and their adequacy with respect to the needs and opportunities of the Internet. The focus is on the structure and content of processes rather that the type of technology involved. E-services focus on the way in which the value generated by a company can be offered to other businesses and customers. On the supply side, e-services propose a common approach to aspects like description, discovery, and negotiation of the products generated by an e-business. The e-service offer of an e-business emerges from the customer interaction elements of the e-processes implemented by the company. On the demand side, e-services offer a new way of acquiring business resources and capabilities. E-processes can exploit the potential of a supply chain based on e-services.