In this book chapter, the authors propose an outsourcing system based on Web services technologies. They propose a Web services hub framework for the standard issues faced by all partners in an outsourcing activity: the supplier, the buyer, and the service provider.

Their proposed framework is based on the following layers: a core infrastructure layer, a systems management layer, a horizontal business Web services layer, a vertical industry applications and a service outsourcing manager, and a value-added services layer. This framework has provided the basis for a working prototype that was created by the authors; the paper contains all of the related details for this business-to-business Web hub.

The working prototype consists of a membership portal for the registration, subscription, and provisioning of the available Web services. All outsourcing partners could configure business processes in a dynamic manner, and a good example from the shipping industry is provided.

This is a nice technical paper on the possibilities and issues related to how Web services technologies (simple object access protocol (SOAP), Web services description language (WSDL), Web services inspection language (WSIL), Web services flow language (WSFL), universal description, discovery, and integration (UDDI), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and so on) can be utilized in an outsourcing scenario. If you are a practitioner, you will probably appreciate some of the ideas presented here, and see immediately how you can put them into practice.