Extending TINA to Support Service Customization

Abstract

In the telecommunication and multimedia service market which is foreseen to greatly flourish in the coming years, an important issue will be the accommodation of 'standard' services to the user's requirements and preferences, i.e., the capabilities of customizing services. Research on this matter is still in its infancy. TINA provides basic but insufficient perception of service customization. In this paper, we analyze the TINA architecture in this sense and we strive to extend it by introducing several flexible models with ascending degrees of customization. These range from a simple service options offer and a tailored service instance creation to a total user participation in the service behavior. An intermediate level consists of a dynamic user-driven customization based on component groups and generic service types. We discuss the mechanisms for the proposed customization levels as well as related issues.