The origin of this term dates back to 2015, in Germany. At that time, the so-called Smart Service World working group worked on a report that advocated the development of smart services as a key factor in the competitiveness of German and European machinery manufacturers.
This is well described in the wikipedia (only in German as of today): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Service
Here are some short excerpts:
“The term Smart Service describes the most developed level of data-driven digital service offerings. They are provided by service providers for customers who use so-called smart products (i.e. technical objects equipped with sensors capable of recording and transmitting data because they are controlled by software and connected to a network, for example the Internet).”
“They represent a way to prepare and analyze data for a specific purpose.”
Smart Services as a subset of Data-based Services
“Often there is not enough distinction between data-based services and smart services - and the two terms cannot be used interchangeably. Although every smart service is fundamentally a data-based service, not every data-based service is automatically a smart service.”
In this excerpt the article underlines an important characteristic of a Smart Service. In order for a service to be “smart” it is not enough to have some raw data available. Raw data must be processed, aggregated, transformed in order to extract useful information, which leads to actions, to pursue a specific purpose.
Connected Services vs Smart Services
For the purpose of this Academy we can consider Connected Services equivalent to Data-driven Services. Thus Smart Services are a subset of Connected Services.
The intelligence engine of Servitly DPS and Smart Services
Servitly DPS supports the delivery of both smart and non-smart services. In order to deliver smart services the key component used in the architecture is the “Intelligence Engine”.