An enterprise-level analysis of customer-provider relationships and implications for QoS enforcement

Today, a large variety of services is available to every person and every company that have appropriate access to the Internet. Markets for electronic services have come into being. The by far most common market type is the open service market (OSM). Most approaches, e.g. trading, however, are dedicated to a single service use only. Therefore, we analysed the relationships between service customers and providers using transaction cost theory. We found that there is insufficient support for the repetitive use of services on a long-term basis. To bridge this gap, we developed the model of service supplier relations (SSR), drawing inspiration from the subcontracting industry, which is widely accepted, e.g. in the automotive industry. In the discussion of the SSR model, we concentrate on issues relating to the monitoring and enforcement of service supply agreements. In particular, we focus on the long-term aspects of such agreements and on quality of service (QoS). We apply a categorization of service properties into five groups of service aspects. For each of these groups, we explain how to manage them using QoS control loops. Finally, we also demonstrate how SSR and QoS control loops can be implemented