It is my pleasure to present this first issue of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing. The tremendous growth in services computing and related fields over the past few years created a need for an archival journal to publish the latest research results and facilitate better understanding of the algorithmic, mathematical, statistical, and computational methods that are central in services computing. The papers, which are to be accepted, peer reviewed, published online in their originally submitted format, edited and laid out, and then finally published online as a complete issue, will be chosen not only to emphasize the mathematical, statistical, and computational methods, but also to highlight the functional elements of related emerging fields, such as service-oriented architecture, Web services, business process integration, cloud computing, computer services solution performance management, and services operations and management. This is truly a broad goal for this journal, but, with your support through your papers, your peer review efforts, comments, and of course subscriptions, it is our belief that the community at large will benefit immensely. We anticipate that these transactions will be of interest to readers and authors working in all areas of computer services, communications, and information technologies.

The Editorial Board, under the direction of the Editor-in-Chief (EIC), will determine the editorial content and manage the rigorous peer review process to ensure publication of high-quality, original papers. The IEEE Computer Society will act as the administrative partner and will manage the manuscripts from their initial submission to final publication.

Many individuals, too numerous to mention here, contributed their time and ideas to define the scope and vision of this publication. I would like to acknowledge the service and dedication of the members of the Publication Board, the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) Search Committee, and the IEEE Computer Society’s key staff members, such as Alicia Stickley and Robin Baldwin. I would also like to particularly thank the past Publisher and now Executive Director of the IEEE Computer Society, Angela Burgess, for her perseverance in seeing this publication through the process of acceptance and Mike Williams, 2007 President of the IEEE Computer Society, for his administrative support and critical decision that made this publication a reality.

I am delighted to introduce Dr. Liang-Jie Zhang as the inaugural EIC. He is well-known to the community through his many contributions, including his leadership as past (2006) General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS) and the IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), as well as his guidance on subsequent administrative committees for both conferences. In addition, Dr. Zhang is the program manager and leader of IBM’s Watson Labs Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) project and he serves as one of the leading contributors to their SOA solution stack 2.0 design and implementation. A brief vita of Dr. Liang-Jie Zhang follows.

Frank E. Ferrante

Board of Governors (2007-2009) and

At-Large Member Publications, IEEE Computer Society

Dr. Liang-Jie (LJ) Zhang is a research staff member and program manager of application architectures and realization at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where he has made significant original contributions to services computing innovations and interactive media systems. He is the founding chair of IBM Research’s Services Computing Professional Interest Community. He is the worldwide leader of IBM’s SOMA Modeling Environment (SOMA-ME), which is the model-driven SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) solution design platform for IBM. He is also the worldwide coleader of IBM’s SOA Solution Stack (aka SOA Reference Architecture: Solution View) project. His new book, Services Computing, was published by Springer. He has received two IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, 10 IBM Plateau Invention Achievement Awards, an Outstanding Achievement Award from the World Academy of Sciences, and an Innovation Leadership Award from the Chinese Institute of Electronics. Dr. Zhang has been granted 36 patents and has 20 pending patent applications. As the lead inventor, he holds federated Web services discovery and dynamic services composition patents. He is the chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Services Computing.