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Scenario based techno-business analysis of service platforms and their service portfolios

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Abstract

This work focuses on techno-business analysis of service platforms and service portfolios. Service platform (SP) hosts services and enabling service functionality. Service providers deliver two main products: end-user services to their customers and enablers to other business actors. 3rd party service providers combine enablers with their own functionality, wrap them in end-user services and deliver them to their customers.

SPs are very complex systems technically as well as in user and business aspects. Ignoring or oversimplifying any aspect can decrease the realism and value of techno-business analyses. On the other side, including all the aspects would make the model too complex to be practically useful. We present in this paper a scenario-driven approach for techno-business modeling and analysis, which is sufficiently simple to be practical and complete enough to give realistic results. It is based on a generic service platform model (GSPM) (represented by ontology, structural and mathematical models) combined with scenario-based modeling of service portfolios and model-based mapping and projection techniques. It enables techno-business analysis at an early stage of service development to serve as a foundation for investment decisions.

This analytical framework has been used in a series of practical cases. One of them, provision of mobile service bundles, is presented in this work. We discuss our experience and suggest future improvements in the proposed approach to model driven techno-business analysis.

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Zoric, J., Bræk, R. Scenario based techno-business analysis of service platforms and their service portfolios. Telecommun Syst 46, 95–116 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-010-9280-8

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