Towards a Framework for Context-Aware Services Management

The research presented in this article proposes an innovative services management infrastructure for e-business services integration. E-business environments are characterised by a variety of services from providers as well as constantly changing demands from requesters (e.g. users). Managing services and providing effective solutions through adequate identification and invocation of services to meet the various requirements arising within such environments remains a major challenge. Resulting research problems include questions such as how to effectively manage and execute knowledge about services and the contexts in which they are requested to meet services management tasks. A conceptual solution framework and a research prototype are presented in this article, illustrated by a services management and delivery application scenario from the e-health domain as an example. The framework however provides a generic solution that is applicable in a broad range of electronic services integration scenarios, such as supply chain integration in the e-business domain, and many others.