Economic Aspects of Quality of Service for Internet Based IT Services

In academic research there is a long ongoing and vital discussion on the evolution and design of technologies that enable the management and control of quality of service (QoS) for Internet based IT services. Whereas technological aspects have been extensively discussed, from an industry perspective, there is a strong need for a structured research on economic aspects of QoS. A clear understanding of IT service quality and its dependency on the quality of data transmission is a precondition for an effective design of future service distribution technologies. This work provides an overview on the state of the art in economic QoS research. It discusses economic aspects of QoS on four central economic dimensions: the product dimension, the customer interface dimension, the infrastructure dimension and the financial management dimension. Moreover, this article discusses future QoS prospects and challenges.