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ASG Scenarios

Management of Services in Dynamic Supply Chains

The idea behind this scenario is that an internet service provider (ISP) that already has a business to customer solution for domain registration, web hosting and related fields wants to broaden its business by also providing a business-to-business solution. The present B2C solution based on a web shop allows ordering of domains, emails, and web space as shown in the following figure:

B2B Solution

The ISP must provide functionality for domain registration, operating & maintaining DNS information, web hosting configuration, and payment bundled to end customer products. Selection of domain registration interfaces depends on the specific top level domain. Assignment of domains with .com or .org endings is governed by ICANN while, for example, national domains are assigned by DENIC in Germany or NICAT in Austria. Registrars accredited by the supervising organizations can register subordinate domains. Web hosting services encapsulate interfaces for web hosting systems. They allow allocation of web space to users while enforcing fine-grained restrictions on data volume, traffic and email configuration.

The goal of developing a B2B solution based on the ASG platform is the reuse of already available elementary business capabilities as shown in the following figure:

B2B Solution

The vision of an enlarged market drives the ISP to shift the existing end-customer-centric application to a more flexible platform that can be used through various front-end solutions operated by resellers. Moreover, service reuse in a flexible environment reduces customer acquisition costs and support costs for the ISP. The underlying internet service provisioning system requires extensions to support a more generalized Business-to-Business approach instead of a restricted B2C application. Currently the complexly interweaved subtasks of product ordering in the web shop and provisioning of these products through a backend system hinders the reuse of provisioning capabilities through varying order processes. The next figure shows the conceptual architecture of the ASG-based realisation.

More details about the scenario and how it was realised using the ASG service provisioning platform can be found in the document DONE Dynamic Supply Chain Scenario for Internet Service Providers.