Empowering SME Users Through Technology Innovation: A Services Computing Approach

Web-based technologies are now quite widespread, and this paper relates how traditional information and communications technologies such as those associated with SME users can be coupled with Internet technologies in offering e-business solutions. SME users are traditionally not well resourced and do not have adequate computing infrastructure within their local work environments. The paper proposes an online information services infrastructure with the core services oriented technology as its basis, packaging various information resources behind the scenes. The online information service infrastructure invokes relevant sophisticated IT services only if necessary, and consequently delivers virtual technology capacity to SME users. The proposed transformation and changes within SME work environments will be minimal and should bring little interruption to the existing operations. An experiment has been carried out according to such visions. The experiment shows the effectiveness of the online applications integration through adaptive services, and an innovative knowledge driven model for economic use of information resources. The research aims to provide a basis to understand the potential benefits, barriers and solutions to integrate the traditional SME environments with leading-edge online services.