Christof Weinhardt

Driven by maturing Web service technologies and the wide acceptance of the service-oriented architecture paradigm, the software industry’s traditional business models and strategies have begun to change: software vendors are turning into service providers. In addition, in the Web service market, a multitude of small and highly specialized providers offer modular services of almost any kind and economic value is created through the interplay of various distributed service providers that jointly contribute to form individualized and integrated solutions. This trend can be optimally catalyzed by universally accessible service orchestration platforms – service value networks (SVNs) – which are the underlying organizational form of the coordination mechanisms presented in this book. Here, the authors focus on providing comprehensive business-oriented insights into today’s trends and challenges that stem from the transition to a service-led economy. They investigate current and future Web service business models and provide a framework for Web service value networks. Pricing mechanism basics are introduced and applied to the specific area of SVNs. Strategies for platform providers are analyzed from the viewpoint of a single provider, and so are pricing mechanisms in service value networks which are optimal from a network perspective. The extended concept of pricing Web service derivatives is also illustrated. The presentation concludes with a vision of how Web service markets in the future could be structured and what further developments can be expected to happen. This book will be of interest to researchers in business development and practitioners such as managers of SMEs in the service sector, as well as computer scientists familiar with Web technologies. The book’s comprehensive content provides readers with athorough understanding of the organizational, economic and technical implications of dealing with Web services as the nucleus of modern business models, which can be applied to Web services in general and Web service value networks specifically..

Accurate predictions are essential in many areas such as corporate decision making, weather forecasting and technology forecasting. Prediction markets help to aggregate information and gain a better understanding of the future by leveraging the wisdom of the crowds. Trading prices in prediction markets thus reflect the traders’ aggregated expectations on the outcome of uncertain future events and can be used to predict the likelihood of these events. This book demonstrates that markets are accurate predictors. Results from several empirical studies reported in this work show the importance of designing such markets properly in order to derive valuable predictions. Therefore, the findings are valuable for designing future prediction markets.

Driven by maturing Web service technologies and the wide acceptance of the service-oriented architecture paradigm, the software industry’s traditional business models and strategies have begun to change: software vendors are turning into service providers. In addition, in the Web service market, a multitude of small and highly specialized providers offer modular services of almost any kind and economic value is created through the interplay of various distributed service providers that jointly contribute to form individualized and integrated solutions. This trend can be optimally catalyzed by universally accessible service orchestration platforms – service value networks (SVNs) – which are the underlying organizational form of the coordination mechanisms presented in this book. Here, the authors focus on providing comprehensive business-oriented insights into today’s trends and challenges that stem from the transition to a service-led economy. They investigate current and future Web service business models and provide a framework for Web service value networks. Pricing mechanism basics are introduced and applied to the specific area of SVNs. Strategies for platform providers are analyzed from the viewpoint of a single provider, and so are pricing mechanisms in service value networks which are optimal from a network perspective. The extended concept of pricing Web service derivatives is also illustrated. The presentation concludes with a vision of how Web service markets in the future could be structured and what further developments can be expected to happen. This book will be of interest to researchers in business development and practitioners such as managers of SMEs in the service sector, as well as computer scientists familiar with Web technologies. The book’s comprehensive content provides readers with athorough understanding of the organizational, economic and technical implications of dealing with Web services as the nucleus of modern business models, which can be applied to Web services in general and Web service value networks specifically..

Der Autor analysiert die aktuelle Rolle, der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie (IuK) im Bereich der Finanzdienstleistungen und zeigt auf, wie neue Methoden und Konzepte der Informationsverarbeitung genutzt und auch weiterentwickelt werden konnen, um ganzheitliche Losungsansatze - insbesondere fur die informationstechnische Unterstutzung der Finanzberatung - gestalten zu konnen. Verzeichnis: Der Autor zeigt, wie neue Methoden und Konzepte der Informationsverarbeitung genutzt werden konnen, um ganzheitliche Losungsansatze - insbesondere fur die informationstechnische Unterstutzung der Finanzberatung - gestalten zu konnen.