Service Oriented Computing for Humans as Service Providers

For the past twenty years, Service Oriented Computing has changed the way in which information technology was understood. The approach involves not only technological advances that have influenced the development of Software Engineering, such as Service Oriented Architecture, Web services, Service Choreography, or Microservices. In addition, it has also provided the pillars for the development of Cloud Computing, which has transformed how the business in Information and Communication Technology is developed. In that context, this work focuses on how Service Oriented Computing can also drive the integration of humans in the Internet of Things and Crowd Sensing loops by enabling them to act as service providers. The key to this is the deployment of services on mobile devices, in particular smartphones. The enormous penetration of these devices in today’s society, together with the personal nature of the information they handle, open a new horizon for the development of services. Through them individuals are able to make personal information available to others. This paper depicts Human Microservices, an architecture that allows humans to be considered as service providers, and discusses the open challenges in the field that conforms one of the next frontiers for Service Oriented Computing.