In open service ecosystems, when a collaboration between services is established, a communicatation link (binding) needs to be established. The collaboration contract sets requirements for this binding; these requirements may not be fulfilled by the underlying service bus but must be constructed as an additional "mini-middleware".

There are two related thesis topics on this area:

• a small number of interesting channel types are constructed, utilising the open binding paradigm; and
• utilisation of these ready-made bindings in collaboration establishment processes.