Open semantic service networks

Online service marketplaces will soon be part of the economy to scale the provision of specialized multi-party services through automation and standardization. Current research, such as the *-USDL service description language family, is already defining the basic building blocks to model the next generation of business services. Nonetheless, the developments being made do not target to interconnect services via service relationships. Without the concept of relationship, marketplaces will be seen as mere functional silos containing service descriptions. Yet, in real economies, all services are related and connected. Therefore, to address this gap we introduce the concept of open semantic service network (OSSN), concerned with the establishment of rich relationships between services. These networks will provide valuable knowledge on the global service economy, which can be exploited for many socio-economic and scientific purposes such as service network analysis, management, and control

Shopbots, Powershopping, Powersales: New Forms of Intermediation in E-Commerce - An Overview -

With the advent and proliferation of the Internet many aspects of business and market activities are changing. New forms of intermediation also called cybermediaries are becoming increasingly important as a coordinator of interaction between buyers and sellers in the electronic market environment. Especially the overwhelming abundance of information offered by the Internet promotes the development of new intermediarie like malls, shopbots, virtual resellers etc. This paper provides a detailed overview of different new forms of cybermediation and illustrates their influence on consumer choice, firm pricing and product differentiation strategies.comparison shopping, cybermediaries, e-commerce, shopbots

SecConNet:Smart and secure container networks for trusted big data sharing

There are many organizations interested in sharing data with others. However, they can do this only if a secure platform is available. Digital Data Marketplaces (DDMs) are emerging as a framework for organizations to share their data. To increase trust among participating organizations multiple agreements should be established to determine policies about who has access to what. Translating these high-level sharing policies to actionable code and setting up an infrastructure that implements and enforces the policies is still a big challenge.In SecConNet, we research novel container network architectures, which utilize programmable infrastructures and virtualization technologies across multiple administrative domains whilst maintaining the security and quality requirements of requesting parties for both private sector and scientific use cases. Containers are lightweight alternatives to full-fledged virtual machines. A container can operate as a secure, isolated, and individual entity that on behalf of its owner manages and processes the data it is given. However, for multi-organization (chain) applications groups of containers need access to the same data and/or need to exchange data among them. Technologies to connect containers are developed with primary attention to their performance, but the greatest challenge is the creation of secure and reliable multi-domain container networks. We first investigate different technologies to evaluate their capabilities to support the network infrastructure requirements in secure data sharing. We then proposed a P4-based network to be able to build a multi-domain DDM. Finally, we use the capabilities of the P4-based network to monitor the transactions in the DDM

SecConNet:Smart and secure container networks for trusted big data sharing

There are many organizations interested in sharing data with others. However, they can do this only if a secure platform is available. Digital Data Marketplaces (DDMs) are emerging as a framework for organizations to share their data. To increase trust among participating organizations multiple agreements should be established to determine policies about who has access to what. Translating these high-level sharing policies to actionable code and setting up an infrastructure that implements and enforces the policies is still a big challenge.In SecConNet, we research novel container network architectures, which utilize programmable infrastructures and virtualization technologies across multiple administrative domains whilst maintaining the security and quality requirements of requesting parties for both private sector and scientific use cases. Containers are lightweight alternatives to full-fledged virtual machines. A container can operate as a secure, isolated, and individual entity that on behalf of its owner manages and processes the data it is given. However, for multi-organization (chain) applications groups of containers need access to the same data and/or need to exchange data among them. Technologies to connect containers are developed with primary attention to their performance, but the greatest challenge is the creation of secure and reliable multi-domain container networks. We first investigate different technologies to evaluate their capabilities to support the network infrastructure requirements in secure data sharing. We then proposed a P4-based network to be able to build a multi-domain DDM. Finally, we use the capabilities of the P4-based network to monitor the transactions in the DDM

The Future of Retail Operations

Retailing consists of all the activities associated with the selling of goods to the final consumer. In this article, we review the research on retail operations published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Research (M&SOM) since 1999. We then discuss the current retail landscape and the new research directions it offers, in which M&SOM can play a prominent role