LNG Terminal Services as a Digital Business Ecosystem

Today, one of the global market trends in the LNG sector and especially in LNG terminals is the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in many areas such as operation, management and efficient planning, commercial and support services, customer contacts, etc. In this direction, many efforts have been made to incorporate various value-added applications and services that implement e-business solutions. This new digital business environment includes the creation and use of innovative software applications and web services by LNG-related companies. Therefore, this upcoming situation requires the conversion of LNG-related companies into a kind of Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) through the integration of multi-disciplinary approaches based on biology terms and e-business models. The first chapters of the paper discuss the origin of the terms business ecosystems as well as DBE giving a detailed overview. The following chapters describe the DBE framework for LNG terminal services through the development of an innovative business platform capable of hosting and delivering a range of web services and applications. The main findings are summarized in the last section.