Revealing Service Commitments in Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture

In this paper we analyze the structuring principles underlying Service-oriented Enterprise Architecture (SoEA) in the light of a core reference ontology for services (UFO-S). The ontology provides a broad account for services and is centered on the service commitments/claims that are established by service participants throughout the service lifecycle. UFO-S is applied as theory to support the analysis of SoEA structuring techniques and thereby reveal social aspects inherent to service phenomena in SoEA (e.g., commitments/claims, and delegations) that remain underexplored due to the current prevailing capability-based SoEA view. From that, we advocate for a commitment-based SoEA view, which can be harmonized to the capability-based SoEA view in order to establish richer SoEA structuring principles. Implications of our analysis are discussed taking as basis widely adopted service-oriented approaches (SOA-RM by OASIS, ITIL, and ArchiMate).