SAP Research Aims to Accelerate “Internet of Services”

SAP NEWSBYTE, With the rise of commoditized, on-demand services, the stage is set for the acceleration and access to services on an Internet scale, according to SAP Research. The global technology research unit of SAP has launched the Internet of Services community, having dedicated significant research and development (R&D) efforts – some of which through public funding, others that the unit has invested in and leads, notably the German BNBF Theseus. The launch of the community was announced at the EU Future Internet Assembly, being held in Stockholm, Sweden, November 23-24, 2009. Following major R&D investments in the Internet of Services with publicly co-funded projects, including the TEXO project within the THESEUS research program initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology as well as a number of EU DG INFSO projects (i.e., FAST, RESERVOIR, MASTER, ServFace, SHAPE, SLA@SOA, SOA4ALL), SAP Research has launched the Internet of Services community.

The community aims to foster collaboration, dissemination and uptake of Internet of Services concepts, technologies and use cases, in order to leverage the significant investments and experience gained to date. It is a company-neutral, non-for-profit, open forum for researchers, technology vendors, service providers and end users.

A significant achievement out of SAP Research on Internet of Services is the unified services description language (USDL), which allows services to be exposed beyond company “firewalls,” to business networks and communities, and out to the Web. USDL goes beyond previous proposals for describing services such as WSDL. Both business aspects of services — such as ownership and custodianship, availability and pricing, and service access and versioning constraints — and technical aspects are supported. USDL is the first stage of widely exposing services so that consumers can discover details of services without reliance on service providers. In addition, third-parties can repurpose services through new channels and applications while utility services for cloud hosting and business-to-business interoperability can be selected based on their capabilities to provide outsourced support for services.