Efficient Business Service Consumption by Customization with Variability Modelling

The establishment of service orientation in industry determines the need for efficient engineering technologies that properly support the whole life cycle of service provision and consumption. A central challenge is adequate support for the efficient employment of complex services in their individual application context. This becomes particularly important for large-scale enterprise technologies where generic services are designed for reuse in several business scenarios. In this article we complement our work regarding Service Variability Modelling presented in a previous publication. There we presented an approach for the customization of services for individual application contexts by creating simplified variants, based on model-driven variability management. That work presents our revised service variability metamodel, new features of the variability tools and an applicability study, which reveals that substantial improvements on the efficiency of standard business service consumption under both usability and economic aspects can be achieved.