Enhancing the maturity of open service ecosystems and inter-enterprise collaborations

Abstract

The present business era is labeled by collaborations across enterprise boundaries and by utilisation of service-based computing. Pervasive computing utilities are created to match the basic business activities, such as contracting and breach management, adaptation of innovative business models, and collaboration management. Categories of computer assisted breeding environments and automated service collaboration management ecosystems have been developed to address these needs. However, a maturity framework is required for comparing solutions and indicating gaps in systems development and standardisation, and for adoption of a sufficient set of multidisciplinary research and evaluation methodologies. This paper first introduces steps towards a maturity model, focusing on features that contribute to the correctness of collaborations and scalability of the ecosystem. Second, it introduces the choices made in Pilarcos ecosystem. Finally, it discusses the need for standards and maturity models on this domain, and raises issues on the research methodologies required. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.