1.6 Summary 

This chapter gives an overview of the move towards the delivery of services over the Web 

and the introduction of QoS in the components that are used to deliver Web based services. 

Although QoS can offer specific guarantees on how an individual component in a service 

delivery chain should perform, for QoS to be effective in service delivery, it needs to be 

managed in all the components. The problem is that this is not usually possible due to 

technical difficulties in generating composite views of QoS or the fact that different 

components are managed by different organisations. However QoS management of 

components in a Web delivered service does not indicate how a service actually performs to 

the end user. This leaves the Service Provider not knowing how the service performance and 

availability are perceived by the end user. What is suggested is that monitoring the service as 

perceived by the end user offers a true reflection of service availability and performance and 

provides a valuable diagnostic tool for the Service Provider as to how the service performs 

overall. Finally the objectives of this dissertation, the technical approach taken and the 

dissertation structure were outlined. 

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