The development in the area of Grid computing will have radical effects on the software services landscape. It is one of the biggest challenges for the European software and software services area in the coming years and raises many questions, from legal issues to standardization and software service lifecycle, to name just a few. It will also bring new business models and offer new possibilities for SMEs.

The EU-funded project 3S deals with this fundamental shift and analyses the upcoming challenges, both on a technical and a non-technical level. The Second ECSS Workshop will address future dialogues on software services challenges.

The "European Community for Software & Software Services - Architectures, Infrastructures, Engineering" (ECSS), founded by the 3S project, plays a central role throughout the project and beyond. The goal is to develop strategic judgements and guidelines that are shared by the widest possible range of stakeholders active in the software services field throughout Europe. The Green Paper, which was published in September 2007, and the first interactive ECSS-Workshop opened the floor for a Europe-wide dialogue between research, industry and intermediaries in the ICT field.

The second workshop, which is organized in co-operation with ETAPS, will focus on the following challenges: (1) Leveraging semantics for dynamic discovery, matching and composition of software services; (2) Non-functional requirements & business processes and policies for software services provision; (3) Privacy protection and market regulation in convergent electronic communications.

The workshop is open for all interested stakeholders in the field of Software & Software Services and addresses both, the science community and the industry. Participants will have the opportunity, to have direct influence on the White Paper, to play a part in the strategic planning of resources in FP7 and to be published at a European level.

All contributions - which can also be made via on-line-consultation - will eventually build up the ECSS White Paper, an action paper for the European Commission, defining common long-term views for key areas of S&S in order to foster the competitive position in the area of software services and Grid computing worldwide. The ECSS White Paper will be presented at the ECSS International Conference which is planned for end of 2008.

More information on the workshop can be found at www.eu-ecss.eu/events/2nd-ECSS-workshop/