New high-speed networks provide new opportunities for service providers to
offer advanced voice, data, and multimedia services. This paper describes a
n extendible framework for the efficient creation and deployment of service
s. The framework integrates the needs of service providers, service develop
ers, and end users within a single coherent architecture. In this architect
ure, services are composed of distributed software components. The framewor
k provides the infrastructure for component interaction and encourages reus
e of service logic from a rich set of basic components. This paper describe
s details of both the infrastructure and the components that implement the
reusable service logic. The application of the service framework is illustr
ated by a case study of a multi-party service for collaborative work in pro
ject teams. The integration of the service framework and the Lucent Softswi
tch is a promising direction for future research.