Traditionally, Software Has Been Perceived, Negotiating in Service-oriented Environments

developed, and delivered as a product. However, the Internet has created a recent surge of interest in developing software as a service delivered and consumed on demand. The benefit of this approach is seen in the looser coupling between business problems and the associated software solutions—hence the increased ability to evolve systems as business requirements change. This shift toward a service-oriented model of software brings about a number of benefits as well as research challenges. The concept of delivering software as a service is relatively simple: “Do not buy software, simply use it as and when you need it.” Putting such a concept into practice, however, is far more complex and involves many issues. In this article, we address the questions: What are the characteristics of a market for software services? What are the characteristics of negotiating in such an environment? The work presented here is based upon ongoing research into service-oriented software and is designed to form a framework for the next generation of service-based software moving far beyond turnkey systems, outsourcing, ASPs, and current Web services technology. The decision to buy or rent software usually depends on the characteristics of the needs and the way allocating available resources are chosen. For example, it is more likely that one would rent a car if the need is just temporary or the up-front cost is better allocated elsewhere. Delivering software as a service addresses customers with temporary or rapidly changing needs, where software can be rented over the Internet, composed to deliver the required outcome, and then discarded. Logical separation of need from the need-fulfillment mechanism is at the heart of the service model. For instance, the different activities run by a bank could be considered as different services run by different commercial bodies and then combined to provide the customer with a certain service [9]. Customer credit analysis, money transfer, fund management, and Internet banking could all be done by different entities at the back end. The final service received by the customer is a combination of a number of these services. A service-oriented model of software is one in which software functionality is delivered as a service, where each time functionality is required, service elements are identified, terms and conditions are negotiated, executed, and then discarded [2, 4]. This concept of “discarding” is crucial to the service model since it implies no further obligation to that