The FRIENDS platform - A software platform for advanced services and applications

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.