Sean Wellington

Bio: Sean Wellington is an academic researcher from Southampton Solent University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Service provider & Software quality. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 18 citations.

The software quality challenges of service oriented architectures in e-commerce

Abstract: Web Services technologies and their supporting collection of de facto standards are now reaching the point of maturity where they are appearing in production software systems. Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) using Web Services as an enabling technology are also being discussed widely in the IT press. However, despite the numerous and real advantages of these architectural patterns there are still many software quality challenges that remain unresolved. This is particularly true as we consider more advanced architectures that exploit the technology to its maximum advantage: utility computing and on-demand service discovery and composition, grid computing and multi-agent systems will only become pervasive once the software quality challenges of real-world industrial applications have been addressed. In this paper potential quality issues such as performance, reliability and availability are addressed in terms of the quality assurances that might need to be provided to consumers of services. Proposed XML-based Service Level Agreement (SLA) languages are reviewed as a means of providing these quality assurances in machine-readable ways. We also discuss how SLAs might be automatically negotiated to enable automated, on-demand service discovery and composition. The next section of this paper addresses quality issues from a service provider's perspective. The providers of such services will need to ensure that SLA commitments are met and this poses interesting problems in terms of application management. Network quality of service is currently addressed through such means as IntServ and DiffServ. Research proposals to introduce similar techniques at an application level are described. From the service consumer's perspective, interesting research proposals for proactively ensuring that good quality of service is obtained are also reviewed. These could be particularly important for creating confidence, from a consumer's perspective, in these architectures. Finally, the paper evaluates the challenges and suggests areas where further research is most urgently required.

Service oriented computing in practice: an agenda for research into the factors influencing the organizational adoption of service oriented architectures

Abstract: The paradigm of service-oriented computing (SOC) has emerged as an approach to provide flexibility and agility, not just in systems development but also in business process management. This modular approach to defining business flows as technology independent services has gained unanimous popularity among end-users and technology vendors alike. Although there is a significant amount of ongoing research on the potential of service oriented architectures (SOAs), there is a paucity of research literature on the factors affecting the adoption of service-oriented computing in practice. This paper reviews the current state of the technology, identifies the factors influencing the decision to adopt service-oriented computing as an enterprise strategy and discusses the associated research literature, and concludes with a suggested research agenda and conceptual framework for investigating the use of service-oriented computing in practice.

Service Oriented Architecture: Challenges for Business and Academia

Abstract: Today, the means for attaining competitive advantage with information technology (IT) has shifted from efficiently managing the organization's operations to discovering ways to collaborate with industry partners to provide products and services to markets that are otherwise uneconomical to pursue. Current IT challenges center on ways to integrate diverse systems into function rich business processes that span organizational boundaries. Though service oriented architecture (SOA) is poised to become a mainstream technology, its success may hinge on a meeting of the minds between the architects and developers of Web services and business process modelers who map out corporate requirements. This paper defines SOA, discusses how SOA relates to business process management, and provides an illustration of enterprise SOA applied in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment. The paper also describes how SOA motivates change in IT governance, enumerates the fundamentals of SOA success, and reflects on implications for IT education.

Organizational Constraints to Realizing Business Value from Service Oriented Architectures: An Empirical Study of Financial Service Institutions

Abstract: Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are gaining popularity as an approach to provide flexibility and agility, not just in systems development but also in business process management. Studies of the practical business impacts of SOA are crucial as the number of SOA implementations grows, and are required for a better critical understanding of this popular architectural concept that is being rapidly adopted by industry organizations. Although there is a significant amount of ongoing research related to technology implementations of SOAs, there is a paucity of research literature on the factors affecting the adoption of service-oriented computing and the realization of business value in practice. This paper empirically examines the adoption of service-oriented computing (SOC) as an enterprise strategy across fifteen firms, and discusses the organizational constraints that influence the enterprise adoption and implementation of SOA. In doing so, this paper fills a crucial gap in the academic literature about the practical use of SOA as an enterprise strategy for agility, and lays the groundwork for future work on SOA alignment with organizational strategy. The paper also provides practitioners with guidelines for the successful implementation of SOA to achieve business value.

Determinants of Corporate Web Services Adoption: A Survey of Companies in Korea.

Abstract: Despite growing interest and attention from Information Technology researchers and practitioners, empirical research on factors that influence an organization’s likelihood of adoption of Web services has been limited. This study reports an empirical analysis of survey data to identify the influencing factors and demographic characteristics related to Web services adoption intention—based on whether to adopt and when to adopt Web services—from the perspective of 129 South Korean firms. The survey questionnaire respondents were an individual in each firm who typically advised the key person who would be making the decision to adopt Web services technology. The determining factors of Web services adoption were identified from both in-depth interviews with Web services experts and a literature review. The questionnaire was pretested with a pilot survey of seventy-four South Korean firms. Logistic regression was the main statistical analysis method, and the test showed significant correlation between some factors and whether to adopt. Important factors are business benefit driver (BBD), readiness (RD), and trust (TRUST).