 customer care are deeply related to telecom management. To introduce any equipment, software or technology into the network demands a satis- factory solution regarding its integral management. Appendix 1 Web Services and a Service-Oriented Architecture A service-oriented architecture and web services enable re-use of software resources and information. A brief introduction is found in Chapter 3, Section 3.13. Display Start Select film Nr. of tickets Confirm Get films Get time Get tickets Payment service Service interface Service enabler interface Database service requester services Credit card payment Update Web service provider Figure A1.1 Business or telecom process example. What to do when the process must be changed? Or new processes are required? Can sub-processes or smaller or larger SW units be used from other sources? Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business, by A. Olsson © 2003 Ericsson och Student litteratur. ISBN: 0-470-86851-1 Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business Web services are part of a new architecture called a service-oriented architecture. This architecture eliminates the need for developers to repetitively design and build the same software components that solve the same set of recurring business problems, over and over again. In response to this, a service-oriented architecture enables greater use of existing IT applications by creating services that can be re-used across the enterprise or the telecom network. Such architecture thus minimizes the need for extensive rewriting of code each time a new business or telecom service is required or each time a business process is altered. Figure A1.1 illustrates a process flow which partly uses sub-processes from an external source, called web service provider. The principle can for example be called: Software as a service Services on demand Service enablers on demand Business processes as a service (more advanced development) A web service is a software applicati