The impact of services on electronic commerce

There are significant shifts, both at business and technology levels, toward services. Companies are deconstructing their functions and requirements in terms of explicit services, and then managing their value nets accordingly. Service-oriented architectures, supported by Web service standards and technologies, are rapidly becoming a standard approach for enterprise IT systems. The many functions needed to support real commerce (pricing, fulfillment, marketing, supply chain, customer relationship, etc.) were formulated in terms of Web services. The talk discussed the implications for performance, control, and interactions among actors and activities.