Towards a service level management framework for service value networks

Abstract

The ongoing trend towards a global services economy creates considerable market opportunities and challenges for providers of Software-as-a- Service (SaaS). For meeting customer expectations, an on-demand business model and a service-oriented infrastructure capable of composing services into service networks are the primary approach. Ensuring quality of service and providing detailed guarantees via service level agreements (SLAs) will be a major differentiator of future service offerings. This paper describes the challenges of SLA management for SaaS, an integrated solution that takes economic risk into account, and the software architecture of the chosen approach.