Abstract:

Web Services have experienced great interest during the last years as they were expected to act as enablers of seamless application-to-application integration both within company boundaries and on a global scale. However, a truly global mesh of interoperable services has not yet become reality due to various reasons. Novel technologies and design principles are now about to emerge which shift the Internet towards a major inflection point: It is envisioned to evolve as a global platform for the retrieval, combination and utilization of interoperable resources. In this article, we contrast the Internet as of today and the envisioned Internet of Services along three major categories: Stakeholders (resource providers, consumers and intermediaries), Applications (applications management, types of resources and application development) and finally Technology (resource interfaces and composition, messaging protocols and infrastructure). We conclude with an outlook on the important role this emerging Internet of Services will play as technological enabler of informationservices industrialization.