Thomas Puschmann

Service science views companies as service system entities that interact with other entities to create value. In today's networked value chains competition is no longer among companies, but among networks that may be regarded as service ecologies. Following service science each entity comprises a dynamic configuration of re-sources and structures, thus a variety of design aspects needs alignment within these ecologies. To manage service ecologies this article suggests to link insights from network management with service science. A multi-dimensional framework consistently describes the organizational aspects of network management among service system entities as well as the required processes to align activities between service system entities and the possible information systems to support network management. The framework emerged from a design-oriented research project based on eleven interviews with managers from financial service providers in Germany and Switzerland.

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) are an intensively discussed architectural paradigm in science and practice. Originally grounding in software modularization efforts, SOA is increasingly part of the discourse on business models. For example, software providers no longer offer their solutions solely as complete packages, but rather allow customers to use them in parts or as a whole on a pay-per-use basis (Software as a Service, Platform as a Service). SOA's contribution within these business models is a flexibility gain obtained by abstracting from the underlying implementation. This abstraction leads to a decomposition of applications into fine-granular services. For example, a core banking system might offer a credit worthiness check, while a customer relationship management system processes the customer data. However, these applications are frequently based on different SOA models (e.g., SAP, Oracle). Consequently, increasing modularity causes higher complexity, due to heterogeneous service specifications, service development processes, service implementations, and operating models. Adding to this, often several suppliers with heterogenous SOA platforms are involved. Without a dedicated management of services along their life cycle (Service Lifecycle Management - SLM), additional alignment efforts would be necessary. Thus, the management of services as well as service portfolios arising from the modularization of monolithic applications plays an important role. However, SLM approaches are just as heterogeneous as the different applications and their SOA models. The numerous facets exhibit a clear dichotomy between technical and business-oriented approaches. This article suggests an integrated SLM model to overcome this dichotomy.

The banking industry has been a pioneer in adopting electronic markets with exchanges, clearinghouses, and multilateral trading facilities having become the backbone of today's globally integrated financial transactions. While most banks use the services of these electronic markets to handle interbank processes, they still strive for bilateral relations in the field of customer-facing processes. This position paper argues that the financial crises, the changing behavior of customers, upcoming innovations based on information technology (IT) and financial services offered by non-banks are strong drivers towards more customerorientation in the financial industry. A large variety of banking IT innovations has emerged and illustrates that traditional banks are expected to have less power to impede competition at the customer interface and in consequence need to re-position themselves. Building on these developments on the one hand and existing electronic market infrastructures in the banking industry on the other, the concept of a customer-oriented financial market infrastructure is proposedas a possible future solution. The impact is illustrated using a competitive analysis of the banking industry and analogies to the media industry where new entrants from the computing industry have caused disruptive changes. Besides describing the threat to existing banks, the position paper also discusses the perspectives for banks.