Web Services Ecosystems

The traditional definition of an ecosystem is something related to living things as the following found in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary,
"The complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit". Extending this to the world of web services with the concept of "a software as a service", as the backbone, today we are talking about Web Services Echo Systems.
The article by Alistair Barros and Marlon Dumas describes us, how different entities in the web services world plays different roles and how they are depending on each other forming an ecosystem. Also it shows how different entities are benefited by being part of this web services ecosystem. For example third party developers are developing services or service components and software companies acting as service brokers and integrators depending on them. Another example is how some companies address the space of interoperability and QoS issues on the basis of software as a service.
Also the paper shows unlike application servers, how business environment in an ecosystem evolve constraints. This is depending on the requirements of the demand side and the supply side
Demand side constrains on how services are
1. Discovered
2. Ranked
3. Authenticated
4. Mediated
5. Charged

While Supply side constrains on how services are
1. Published
2. Re-purposed through composition
3. Brokered
4. Re-provisioned through leasing and licensing

As we see that there are multiple entities are benefited under web services ecosystem, there are few obstacles on the way. The paper identifies three major fronts that the web services infrastructure will have to evolve

1.Flexible web services discovery:
Need to go beyond the conventional key word based searches. If the domain of the ecosystem is wider then key word based searches become unsuccessful. Instead it is advisable to use a combination of free-text and ontology-based searches.
2.Conversational multiparty interactions:
Service interactions are getting complex. Different transaction paths in a business process.
3.Service mediation and adaptation:
Services have different behaviours. Need to find cost-effective ways for service interface adaptation.