What Is Services Computing?

On September 15-18, 2004, the Service Computing Technology Committee established by the well-known IEEE Computer Society held the first International Conference on Service Computing (SCC2004) in Shanghai, including 300 experts from IBM Research Center, scholars from famous universities, and business leaders. Many people attended this special academic conference and published hundreds of academic papers and six topics and special reports.

Service computing

A photo sent from North America to a loved one in the country may cost an expensive postage. If it is transmitted via the Internet, it will be printed in a local city in China with warm greetings, exquisite packaging, and even a gift Bunch of flowers will surely make family members feel at home.

For many international students and other overseas compatriots, this is a very ordinary service item. It does not cost much, but it has a lot of demand. Just in this ordinary service project, there are already many concepts of "service computing".

It is reported that many internationally renowned IT companies, including IBM, have turned their research and development direction to business ideas with "service computing" as the core.

What exactly is "Services Computing"? Why does it cause enthusiasm for research, industry, commerce, and technology? What impact and guidance will it have on future business, technology, and research development? This article attempts to explore answers to these questions.

New disciplines driven by service demand

The first annual service computing conference held in Shanghai in September marked the birth of a new discipline recognized by the IEEE authority, and continues to lead relevant experts, scholars and practitioners around the world to continuously improve and develop.

According to Zhang Liangjie, a senior researcher in the e-commerce department of IBM Watson Research Center (IBM Research Headquarters) and chairman of the IEEE Service Computing Technology Executive Committee and vice chairman of the IEEE Electronic Commerce Committee, service computing is a crossover of computer and information technology, business management, and business. A new discipline in consulting services and other fields is the direct result of applying service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology in eliminating the gap between business services and information support technology. It organically integrates a series of latest technological achievements on the basis of forming its own unique scientific and technical system: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web services, Grid & Utility Computing (Grid & Utility Computing), and Business Process Integration & Management (Business Process Integration & Management), the first part solves the problem of technology platform and architecture; the second part solves the problem of service delivery; the third part is the integration and management of the business itself.

Web services have been widely used in many new products and new applications. Grid computing has used the World Wide Web Service standard to provide a standard interface between various grid resources. Service collaboration and management provided by service computing will improve the current overwhelmed business systems, increase production efficiency, and re-establish a new value chain system. At the same time, the shift from focusing on data management to process management will inevitably lead to a lot of implementation work based on service-oriented architecture (SOA).

The establishment of service computing discipline is a natural thing. Beginning in 2001, the world's largest information technology company IBM began to advocate the concept of Dynamic e-Business and turned to Web Services, allowing applications running on different working platforms to communicate and integrate with each other. In June 2002, with the promotion of industry, academia and other aspects, business schools and computer companies have taken the lead to realize the profound impact of Web Services on the industry. The first one organized by Mr. Zhang Liangjie was named Web Services Computing. Relying on the International Internet Computing Conference (IC02) held in Las Vegas, the academic symposium for the first time has integrated online services and computing for the first time, and has taken the first step for the formal designation of "service computing" in the future. In November 2003, under the impetus of the IEEE, the concept of services was further expanded, and a new discipline was officially confirmed that services and computing were linked. The IEEE Service Computing Technology Executive Committee was established with Mr. Zhang Liangjie as the first chairman of the committee.

Full integration of business and technology

The establishment of service computing discipline is fully in line with the actual needs of today's social development. According to Dr. Zhang Liangjie's introduction, we can roughly analyze and explain the "photo express" example given at the beginning of this article.

The online delivery of photos can take advantage of Web Services technology, and the entire service model and technology implementation must be service-oriented (SOA). If the scope of services is expanded, customers who collect photos for overseas delivery and express photos in China If the business expands to more cities, grid computing and utility computing (Grid & Utility Computing) may be used. There is no doubt that in addition to technical support conditions, the success of a project is more importantly the determination of business models. Therefore, the integration of business processes will play a key role. How to make customers feel convenient, fast, and considerate service is also the key to the "photo express" business. Of course, you can use application management software to optimize and integrate this part and reduce costs.

It can be seen that the full use of service computing technology will greatly enhance the efficiency and performance of business operations, no matter how simple the service project in question is. Of course, for those service projects that engage in complex business, the efficiency that can be achieved will be higher. Sensitive IT services companies are more aggressive.

Today's service providers face three major challenges: how to obtain profits from operations and properly reflect the supplier's service costs through a reasonable pricing system? How to increase revenue by quickly deploying new services? How to improve customer satisfaction through customized services, while improving operational efficiency and profit margins? To meet these challenges, service providers need to comprehensively consider, develop or use new and effective service computing management tools under a unique scientific and technical system inherent in service computing.

Far-reaching direction guidance

What direction determines how big the development is. As the service industry becomes more and more an important part of a country's economic aggregate, the promotion of technology must take service itself as the core content of development, and a company's development strategy must also take service as the core. As we all know, half of the total US economy comes from the service industry, and nearly half of IBM's revenue source comes from the service team.

Many professors and experts in the field of business management and information technology are very excited when talking about the name of "service concept". Service represents the business model; computing represents the technology centered on IT technology. These two words together It is highly concentrated on the perfect combination of business and technology. Technology serves business, and the logical relationship between business and new technology is clear. The highest realm of service computing is to bridge the "gap" between business models and technology.

Dr. Zhang Liangjie emphasized that the establishment of the IEEE Service Computing Technology Committee changed the past research and promotion of service computing by scattered institutions, industries, and groups. It can also form a unique scientific and technical system of service computing from the perspective of academic research So as to start with the formulation and promotion of standards, integrate the original technical standards, and encourage all parties involved in the standardization of their respective fields. Make more services can be composed of many standardized and reusable modules, greatly promoting the progress and benefits of service project development.

If the service description is used as a top-down standardization work, all parties in the industry can work from bottom to top. For example, from relatively independent service items such as ERP, CRM, and PLM, the standard definition of the service model is improved in each component department of the enterprise, and a new business component is extracted from different business processes. Of course, the standards of these modules can be jointly formulated by a large company alliance (such as IBM, SAP, SUN, HP, etc.) and research institutions, and then perfected and certified by the industry or authoritative organizations (such as ISO, IEEE), which is easy for others to repeat use. For example, according to the business model life cycle, it can be divided into five key phases: service definition description, modularization, development, delivery, and concurrent management.

We believe that with the in-depth study of the unique science and technology system of service computing, it is an indispensable part of the important strategy of helping society to effectively implement service modernization with advanced information technology. At the same time, the continuous scientific research results of service computing discipline The emergence will definitely be a benign integration of the service-centric value chain, which will lay a solid foundation for the further development of the economy in the future.