The Clarion Call for modern services: China, Japan, Europe, and the U.S.

hat will modern services be like? Today many services are viewed as a craft activity—individual doctors, retail sellers, programmers all doing useful things their own way. There is, however, an increasing role for an organized, analytic, and engineering approach to all these activities. Evidence-based medicine, marketing sciencedriven retailers, and software engineering are examples of these trends. Automated services are a natural object of attention, since they can be observed in great detail, can be reconstructed and improved, and can be combined in new ways quickly and relatively easily. We are therefore seeing a rapid evolution toward an engineering approach to the life cycle of such services, and the application of mathematic and scientific approaches to the problems and opportunities they present. Complex service systems must be viewed at three levels: the functional attributes (what does it do and how does it do it?), nonfunctional attributes (management and control properties such as performance and security), and intentional attributes (what is the goal or purpose of the activity, such as societal benefit, private profit, or personal esteem?). Each level is susceptible to analysis, but different disciplines dominate. As computational services proliferate, new fields of study will open up, combining the computing, engineering, mathematical, management, and social sciences in creative ways. When we look at complex B2B projects, there is a growing application of solution engineering—using the best available techniques to the multiple phases of the activity, managing the risks, increasing predictability of quality and schedule, learning from experience in a project to improve not only the results of that effort but of succeeding solutions. As we examine the stages of a single large business service project (including requirements, design, implementation, deployment, and ongoing operation), and build up portfolios and service lines, much of the work can be formalized and subjected to analysis and radical improvement through optimization, evolutionary learning, and organization improvement. Of course, applying engineering thinking to such projects is not new—without such we would not have fields with names like “civil engineering” or large facilities like airports and suspension bridges. But the confluence of information-dominated services, techniques of computer science, and increasing experience is rapidly opening up new possibilities for modern service. A GLOBAL APPROACH Innovation is imperative to continued growth, increased productivity, and the general health of all economies. After a long history of contributions and breakthroughs to IT innovation, IBM Research is now directing resources toward innovation for the services industry: Business Design and Implementation. How does one model, design, and instantiate optimal business functions? What tools and techniques are needed to create abstractions of an enterprise, to effect the transformation from strategy down to underlying IT systems, and to monitor the end-to-end process? The Component Business Model (CBM) is one approach under development. What is needed to build and deliver industry solutions in an efficient, reusable fashion? Business Optimization and Management. How does one improve decision making and operations of ongoing business functions? How can business data be collected, analyzed, and exploited more optimally? How can business performance be enhanced as a result of the optimization of the underlying function, for example, supply chain? Given the importance of the work force in labor intensive services, how does one forecast, hire, allocate or shift resources to meet changing demand patterns? Services Delivery. In IBM’s internal service delivery centers, what are the best ways to maintain desired service levels while increasing efficiency and productivity? What tools and techniques can guarantee end-to-end manageability and visibility throughout the entire services life cycle from request to delivery? Challenges include the globalization of service delivery, adoption of standardized best practices, automation, virtualization of resources including labor, and the appropriate integration of the human element. Services Sciences Management and Engineering (SSME) applies to each of these areas [94]. IBM Research laboratories worldwide are engaging with local universities and governments on the topic of innovation in services, as described here.