1. 2. 3. 4.

INTRODUCTION CHARACTERISTICS SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE REQUIREMENT ISSUES

5. NON TECHNICAL INTERFACES 6. WHY BUILD SUCH A SYSTEM 7. ADVANTAGES TO THE SUPPLIERS 8. ADVANTAGES TO THE USERS 9. SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE 10.SOFTWARE SERVICE AND ULTRA LATE BINDING

11. SUPPLY LEAD MARKET 12. RELATED CONCEPTS 13. EXISTING APPROACHES AND SERVICEORIENTED SOFTWARE 14. CONCLUSION 15. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

High speed internet has brought new concepts, opportunities and challenges to software engineering methodologies. The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and a related concept of Service Based Software Engineering (SBSE) is an ongoing research with an aim to investigate the requirements, implications, implementation, negotiation and maintenance for providing the users with a service, "a software service".

Conventionally, software has been perceived as a product-oriented concept. This implies that someone has to have the generation of some type of code and then deliver it to the client/user.

Software service should be self adapting.

Future software will be structured in small simple units which co-operate through rich communication structures and information gathering thus it should be fine grained.
Another very essential requirement is the transparency.

Software engineering techniques are usually supply side methods with the support of technological advances. Component based software engineering is necessary, but not sufficient. There is considerable evidence that current component based approaches are still relatively cumbersome and flexible and do not necessary give the levels of ultra flexibility required for extremely dynamic organizations with modification to conventional technologies. For developers the issue therefore no longer how to build information processing systems which have properties of configurability, maintainability and longevity.

Before this concept of service based software engineering is matured, we need to formulize by asking the below mentioned questions: How do consumers know what services are available and how to they evaluate them? How do consumers express their requirement? How are services composed? How are services tested? What is the appropriate service delivery infrastructure? How must consumers data be held to enable portability between different service suppliers? What will be the impact of branded services and marketing activities? How can organizations benefit from rapidly changing services and how will they manage the interface with business processes? How will individuals perceive and manage rapidly changing systems? What is the limit to the speed of change? What payment and reward structures will be necessary to encourage service suppliers? What will be the new industry models and supply chain arrangements? How can we evaluate the research outcomes?

Example of the informal issues which are implied in software include [4] Payment terms and conditions Personalization and configuration Privacy, protection and security Licenses and ownership Responsibilities prior to use Systemfailure, recovery and redress Performance criteria Organizationalprocedures and impact

This proposed solution is going to provide advantages to the supplier as well as the user. As mentioned in the start of this paper that only one but very essential requirement for such is system is the availability of high speed internet. Advantages which are being provided by this system are being mentioned in the next few paragraphs. These can be grouped into two categories namely suppliers and users.

No Pirated Software Immediate Requirements Comprehensive Value Added Service New Sales Competition Market Structure Functionality

Pay-only-what-you-use Always Latest Version of Software is Available Choice of Negotiation

In the service based model, the best cheapest fastest most recent service is bound in and executed. In this view, maintainability is not seen primary as a technical problem, but of a market place solution.

The aim of service based software engineering research is to develop the technology which will enable ultra-late binding, which is the delay of binding until the execution of a system. This will enable consumers to obtain the most appropriate and upto date combination of services required at any point in time.

Commercial software sold on the basis of ownership. Thus an organization buys the object code, with some form of license to use it. Any updates, however important to the purchaser, are the responsibilities of the vendor. Any attempt by the user to modify the software is likely to invalidate ongoing support. This form of marketing is known as SUPPLY LEAD.

In the service based model, the best cheapest fastest most recent service is bound in and executed. In this view, maintainability is not seen primary as a technical problem, but of a market place solution.

Component-based software development aims to create platform-independent component integration frameworks, which provide standard interfaces and thus enable flexible binding of encapsulated software components. Component reuse and alignment between components and business concepts are often seen as major enablers of agile support for e-business. Component marketplaces are now appearing, bringing the vision of marketplace-enabled software procurement closer to reality.

Research is going on in service-oriented-servicebase software engineering. Many small step has been implemented but yet a lot of work is required, if we really want the service concept to mature. Web services is one area which is close to service concept but even web services lack the nontechnical issues such as negotiation and contract. Next few years will be very essential for the development of this concept, it will help the software engineers in designing more efficient software software.

MUHAMMAD SAEED , MUHAMMAD JAFF AR-VR-REHMAN ( saeed@jinnah.edu.pk, jaffar@jinnah.edu.pk) Muhammad Ali Jinnah University, Islamabad, Pakistan (The author who has written the ieee paper.)

The authors acknowledge the work of UK based Pennie Group and their colleagues at Universities of Durham, Keele and UMIST (now University of Manchester). We have extended the different research concepts initially perceived by these researchers