Computer science is entering a new generation. The emerging generation starts by abstracting from software and sees all resources as services in a SOA. In a world of services, it is the service that counts for a customer and not the software or hardware components which implement the service. Service-oriented architectures are rapidly becoming the dominant computing paradigm.

However, current SOA solutions are still restricted in their application context to being in-house solutions of companies. A service Web will have billions of services. While service orientation is widely acknowledged for its potential to revolutionize the world of computing by abstracting from the underlying hardware and software layers, its success depends on resolving a number of fundamental challenges that SOA does not address today.

SOA4All aims at realizing a world where billions of parties are exposing and consuming services via advanced Web technology. The project will provide a comprehensive framework and infrastructure that integrates five complementary and revolutionary technical advances into a coherent and domain independent service delivery platform:

• SOA as the emerging dominant paradigm for application development which abstracts from software to the notion of service.
• Context management, i.e., adapting services to meet local environmental constraints, organizational policies and personal preferences.
• Web principles to scale SOA to a world wide Web communications infrastructure.
• Web 2.0 as a means to structure human-machine cooperation in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
• Semantic Web technologies to automate service discovery, mediation and composition.