Business Services and Business Componentization: New Gaps between Business and IT

Abstract

"Services" is one of the most overloaded terms in the last 5 years in the IT industry. Progressively, the various co-existing meanings of this word have shifted from describing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services concepts to newer ideas such as Business Services and Service Oriented Business Application (SOBA). Consequently, use of the term "services" currently implies different connotations to different audiences, with all inferred meanings only vaguely understood by business researchers and decision-makers outside the IT industry. Something similar occurs with the words "component" and "componentization" which has both IT and business connotations. Business components have recently been proposed and used in modeling enterprises and industries. On the other hand, software and application components have also become very popular with the advent of Service Component Architecture standardization and related efforts. In this paper, we aim to provide a preliminary definition for Business Services and Business Components while also describing how they are different from their related IT siblings. Our goal is to identify the gap and shed some light to the SOA field.