servIce-centrIc It
mAnAgement And
servIce-orIented
ArchItecture
The recognition of the service nature of IT has not
only been a concern of IT managers and information
systems academics, but has also come to
the attention of computer scientists. Spohrer and
Riecker (2006), in their introduction to a special
service sciences issue of Communications of the
ACM, discuss the rise of the service sector and
its influence on IT services. In that same issue,
Rust and Miu (2006) suggest that it is the rise of
the service sector which is driving a computer
revolution. In other words they are suggesting a
link between IT and Industry cemented by the
spread of service concepts.
However, for many IT professionals and
computer scientists, “service-oriented” refers to
an approach to software architecture in which
software agents are loosely coupled to fulfill
an application need. Here, customers, or rather
customers’ computers, request services from
providers through a small set of well-defined,
universally available interfaces. The service
is then the unit of work offered by the service