Service portfolios for managing modular networks

Service-oriented architectures enable the creation of new business processes by making use of readily available modular components often provided by many organizations and departments. The number of services that that can be potentially reused grows rapidly and accordingly, the attention shifts from service deployment to service management. In this research we investigate the concept of service portfolios for enabling reuse of services and facilitating planning. We found that a service portfolio is more than just a catalogue of services. Service portfolios form the bases for developing a roadmap to the future. It also includes service evaluation metrics, descriptions of characteristics of the required services and the service providers, context information, dependencies between services, monitoring and feedback mechanisms and decision support tools. Moreover, service portfolios have a close relationship with organizational strategies, especially those related to sourcing and investment decisions.