An extensive literature research in the fields of IT and business science reveals that service-related terms as service and e-service have multiple interpretations within business science, information science and computer science, resulting in confusion. These three communities take part in the multidisciplinary process of realizing e-Commerce scenarios for services. Each community has its own role in e-service offering, and uses its own terminology. In this paper we analyze the different perspectives that these three communities have on the online service provisioning concept. We introduce different meanings of service-related terms in the three communities, and use a real-world case study to show how all three perspectives and terminologies need to be joined with each other for the realization of collaborative e-Commerce scenarios for service offerings on the Semantic Web.

While exploring value webs-cooperating enterprises- it is common to view such webs from multiple perspectives: (1) the business value perspective, (2) the business process perspective, and (3) the information system perspective. The value perspective explains why a web can exist from a commercial perspective, whereas the process perspective shows the interacting processes of enterprises and the IT perspectives shows the supporting IT architecture. These perspectives each take a different view on the same phenomenon: the value web. Because the phenomenon is for each viewpoint the same the perspectives need to be consistent. This paper introduces an approach to arrive at a business process model of a value web that is consistent with a business value model of the same value web. We propose a step-wise approach that starts with considering the independent transfer of ownership right of a value object and the actual object itself, and finally considers time ordering of these transfers. We illustrate our approach using an industrial strength case study in the aviation sector. 1

An ontology is increasingly becoming an essential tool for solving problems in many research areas. The ontology is a complex information object. It can contain millions of concepts in complex relationships. When we want to manage complex information objects, we generally turn to information systems technology. An information system intended to manage ontology is called an ontology server. The ontology server technology is at the time of writing quite immature. Therefore, this paper reviews and compares the main ontology servers that have been reported in the literatures. As a result, we point out several research questions related to server technology.

Abstract. Innovative networked value constellations, such as Cisco or Dell, are often enabled by Information Technology (IT). The same holds

Business models have been an important topic in various disciplines and particularly e-business. Yet, little research has tempted to compare and integrate the different business model approaches. This paper compares two business model ontologies, the Business Model Ontology BMO and the e 3 value ontology, for the design of business models and value constellations. For that purpose it introduces a framework that allows the comparison of different conceptual approaches to business models. The two ontologies are illustrated through a case study in the domain of rights music management. The outcome of the analysis is twofold. Firstly, it permits a better understanding of business model research. Secondly, it highlights the possible paths to integrate the two ontologies in order to improve the representation, design, and analysis of business models. 1

We outline a rigorous approach that models how companies can electronically offer packages of independent services (service bundles). Its objective is to support prospective Website visitors in defining and buying service bundles that fit their specific needs and demands. The various services in the bundle may be offered by different suppliers. To enable this scenario, it is necessary that software can reason about customer needs and available service offerings. Our approach for tackling this issue is based on recent advances in computer and information science, where information about a domain at hand is conceptualized and formalized using ontologies and subsequently represented in machine-interpretable form. The substantive part from our ontology derives from broadly accepted service management and marketing concepts from business studies literature. In earlier work, we concentrated on the service bundling process itself. In the present chapter, we discuss how to ensure that the created bundles indeed meet customer demands. Experience of Norwegian energy utilities shows that severe financial losses can be caused when companies offer service bundles without a solid foundation for the bundle-creation process and without an in-depth understanding of customer needs and demands. We use a running case example from the Norwegian energy sector to demonstrate how we put theory into practice.

Abstract. Offering service bundles to the market is a promising option for service providers to strengthen their competitive advantages, cope with dynamic market conditions and deal with heterogeneous consumer demand. Although the expected positive effects of bundling strategies and pricing considerations for bundles are covered well by the available literature, limited guidance can be found regarding the identification of potential bundle candidates and the actual process of bundling. The contribution of this paper is the positioning of bundling based on insights from both business and computer science and the proposition of a structured bundling method, which guides organizations with the composition of bundles in practice.

The effective integration of configuration sys-tem development with industrial software development is crucial for a successful implementation of a Mass Customization strategy. On the one hand, configuration knowledge bases must be easy to develop and maintain due to continuously changing product assortments. On the other hand, flexible integrations into existing enterprise applications, e-marketplaces and different facets of supply chain settings must be supported. This paper shows how the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) as an industrial framework for model development and interchange can serve as a foundation for standardized configuration know-ledge representation, thus enabling knowledge sharing in heterogeneous environments. Using UML/OCL as stan-dard configuration knowledge representation languages, the representation of configuration domain-specific modeling concepts within MDA is shown and a formal semantics for these concepts is provided which allows a common understanding and interpretation of configuration task descriptions.

As the technical infrastructure to support Grid environments matures, attention must be focused on integrating such technical infrastructure with technologies to support more dynamic access to services, and ensuring that such access is appropriately monitored and secured. Current approaches for securing organisations thorugh conventional firewalls are insufficient; access is either enabled or disabled for a given port, whereas access to Grid services may be conditional on dynamic factors. This paper reports on the Semantic Firewall (SFW) project, which investigated a policy-based security mechanism responsible for mediating interactions with protected services given a set of dynamic access policies, which define the conditions in which access may be granted to services. The aims of the project are presented, and results and contributions described. 1

Abstract. The call for a “focus on content ” in ontology research by Nicola Guarino and Mark Musen in their launching statement of the journal Applied Ontology has quite some implications and ramifications. We reflectively discuss ontology engineering as a scientific discipline, and we put this into the wider perspective of debates in other fields, including the methodology of social and natural sciences, and of Information Systems and design science research. We outline how ontologies provide us with a (new) scientific method for theory formation. This positioning allows for stronger concepts and techniques for theoretical, empirical and practical validation that in our view are now needed in the field. A prerequisite for this is an emphasis on ontology as a (domain) content oriented concept, rather than as primarily a computer representation notion. Taking application domain theories and the associated content reference of ontologies really seriously as first-class citizens will actually increase the contribution of ontology engineering to the development of scientific method in general. Next, ontologies should develop from the current static representations of relatively stable domain content into actionable theories-in-use, and a possible way forward is to build in capabilities for self-organization of ontologies as service-oriented knowledge utilities (SOKUs) that can be delivered over the Web.