Value Webs: using ontologies to bundle real-world services

Real-world services - that is, nonsoftware-based services - differ significantly from Web services, usually defined as software functionality accessible and configurable over the Web. Because of the economic, social, and business importance of the service concept in general, we believe it´s necessary to rethink what this concept means in an ontological and computational sense. We deal about the OBELIX (ontology-based electronic integration of complex products and value chains) project has therefore developed a generic component-based ontology for real-world services. This OBELIX service ontology is first of all a formalization of concepts that represent the consensus in the business science literature on service management and marketing. We express our service ontology in a graphical, network-style representation, and we´ve developed support tools that facilitate end-user modeling of services. Then, automated knowledge-based configuration methods let business designers and analysts analyze service bundles. We´ve tested our ontology, methods, and tools on applications in real-world case studies of different industry sectors.