ASG-based solutions consist of a service provisioning platform, services, as well as applications, and use semantic information to optimize the service management and provisioning.
The aspects of business advantages of ASG-based solutions are given in the following, the key business benefits of the ASG platform on one hand and the business benefits for the different involved roles on the other.
Key Business Benefits of the ASG Platform
The ASG platform supports the automation and adaptiveness by utilizing semantics and adaptive process management, which, in turn, leads to reduced costs. The business dimensions of the three ASG key features are the following:
The seamless integration of heterogeneous external services reduces the maintenance and modification costs for large numbers of external services. It, therefore, has the potential to ease integration of services and data formats.
The on-demand creation of service compositions supports the composition of services based on automated tools that, in turn, implies a cost reduction in service provision.
Reliable service provision with assured quality of service enables the provision of reliable complete ASG-based solutions.
Benefits of ASG for the Involved Roles
There are different roles involved in providing and using an ASG-based solution. In the following, the benefits ASG provides to these roles are described:
End users interact with applications that are the front end of an ASG-based solution. Operations of the ASG platform as such are transparent to end-users.
ASG makes it possible to easily compose an entirely new end-service that combines functionality from multiple existing systems to provide end users with new capabilities. Service provisioning through ASG platform has potential to offer new and reliable complex services to end users because of adaptive service delivery of the platform.
The fact that the ASG platform facilitates the integration of external services increases the competition on the service market which, in turn, potentially leads to competition on service prices and quality.
External Service Providers offer services which can be incorporated into variety of service compositions which are put together by ASG platform.
ASG fosters the extension of a service landscape in an ASG platform. The benefit of ASG here is that service providers don’t have to worry about the connections to potential partners, but the Quality of Service will define the success of the service. Dynamic service discovery and composition handles the incorporation into end-service offerings.
End-service providers offer an application that uses an ASG platform for utilizing services.
Dynamic service discovery and invocation in ASG makes it easy for end-service providers to find new partners and services which can be incorporated in their end service. This improves time-to-market as connections to partners can be made faster, even dynamically. In addition, ASG makes it easier for partners to do business with end-service providers. Furthermore, end-service providers can dynamically select “best-of-breed" alternatives from the service landscape.
This reduces development efforts of new applications. Moreover, re-using services, possibly external, with high level of Quality of Service usually implies that these services are well tested. Thus, reduced risk is also one benefit of service orientation and ASG.
The result of all this is that end-service providers have better changes to break even with their new services. ASG approach reduces the impact of change because response to changes can be automated.
ASG Platform Providers develop, maintain and operate an ASG platform, as well as the required ontologies and the service landscape.
Platform providers can charge platform users for maintaining the platform and ontology engineering and management. Also they can offer services that provide and evaluate data, which is monitored in the platform.
