Paving the Way for an Open Service Market We live in an age when powerful communications technology is becoming available to everyone. From our home we can send and receive not only analogue voice, but also growing volumes of digital information and even intelligence in the form of agents. We are becoming increasingly mobile and are expecting the same level of connectivity in the home, in the office, and on the road. The regulatory and commercial environment in which we communicate is changing. The telecommunications market is becoming increasingly competitive. The Internet is erasing the borders between information technology and telecommunications. And the way we do business is ever more dominated by electronic exchanges of information. Is our technology ready for the open market of networks and services? Can we manage the growing complexity of computing and telecommunications technology and place it at the service of the people? The challenge for the research community is to develop the tools and techniques that will ultimately bring the full power of communications and information to everyone, in a way that everyone can easily use. The Sixth International Conference on Intelligence in Services and Networks (IS&N’99) is all about technology for paving the way to the open services market. Since the first IS&N conference in 1992 the focus of the IS&N program has continually shifted. We see existing technologies maturing while new ones emerge, but the bottom line has always been putting technology at the service of the people.
