Cloud-based Collaborative Business Services Provision

The notion of service-enhanced product, representing the association of services to manufactured products, offers an important mechanism for value creation and product differentiation. This is particularly relevant in the case of complex, highly customized and long-life products. Provision of suitable services in this context typically requires collaboration among multiple stakeholders. Furthermore, the involvement of the customer is not limited to service consumption but rather includes contributions to new services design and configuration. In response to these requirements, this paper contributes to the clarification of concepts and definition of a framework for collaborative business services design (co-creation) and delivery. At the base of the framework, a cloud-based collaboration platform supports the establishment and operation of the involved enterprise networks. Application examples are given for the solar energy sector.