Chapter1.Introduction

Chapter 1. Introduction

The World Wide Webthe Webis the catalyst for the changes in our communications, work styles, business processes, and ways of seeking entertainment and information. The Internet is just the transport infrastructure for the web-based services that drive so much innovation. Note, however, that the Internet generally gets all the credit. As Thomas Friedman writes in The Lexus and the Olive Tree:

The Internet is going to be like a huge vise that takes the globalization system that I have describedand keeps tightening and tightening that system around everyone, in ways that will only make the world smaller and smaller and faster and faster with each passing day.

This is an accurate description of the environment that most of us deal with directly on a daily basis. The Internet is a tremendous business engine, and, as it transforms the ways we do business, it is being transformed in turn by the ways we use it. We must learn how to manage the growing array of online business services or risk being marginalized by a faster moving and more dynamic business environment.

In this introductory chapter, I discuss the following:

• The types of e-business services

• A definition of webbed services and the webbed ecosystem

• Service Level Management (SLM)

• The structure of this book