Virtual private resources. An approach for long-term binding of services

Current approaches for service mediation, such as trading, do not provide means for a long-term binding of services. They do not ensure that certain services are provided and that the desired service properties are fulfilled. Moreover, a server may withdraw a service offer at any time. For the integration of external services into an enterprise internal service market, it is necessary to guarantee the permanent availability of the services with desired properties and to sustain these properties. This requires that the technical relationship between the service provider and the customer has to be extended by commercial and legal ones. In this paper, we introduce the concept of virtual private resources to enable long-term relationships between the customer and the provider of a service. Virtual private resources are services that can be bound by contract for a longer period of time. They can be considered as private ones, although the physical resources that provide the service may change or be shared with other customers. We introduce the basics of the approach and present a possible architecture for implementing virtual private resources. Finally, we give an example for the application of virtual private resources to implement a traffic information system