Abstract
In the service-oriented computing paradigm and the Web service architecture,
the broker role is a key facilitator to leverage technical capabilities
of loose coupling to achieve organizational capabilities of dynamic customerprovider-
relationships. In practice, this role has quickly evolved into a variety
of intermediary concepts that refine and extend the basic functionality of service
brokerage with respect to various forms of added value like platform or
market mechanisms. While this has initially led to a rich variety of Web service
intermediaries, many of these are now going through a phase of stagnation or
even decline in customer acceptance. In this paper we present a comparative
study on insufficient service quality that is arguably one of the key reasons for
this phenomenon. In search of a differentiation with respect to quality monitoring
and management patterns, we categorize intermediaries into Infomediaries,
e-Hubs, e-Markets and Integrators. A mapping of quality factors and control
mechanisms to these categories depicts their respective strengths and weaknesses.
The results show that Integrators have the highest overall performance,
followed by e-Markets, e-Hubs and lastly Infomediaries. A comparative market
survey confirms the conceptual findings.
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