Abstract: The present invention utilizes a service gateway as a communication intermediary between clients and service providers. The gateway can include a dynamic runtime cache. Clients can communicate with the service gateway using a polling methodology. When polled information is already in the cache, the information can be immediately provided to the clients. Otherwise, the information can be obtained by querying a service provider. Service providers can communicate with the gateway using a subscription methodology. Information updates relating to subscriptions can be pushed to the cache. Hence, the cache always contains current information. Thus, clients are able to remain loosely-coupled in a service oriented architecture (SOA) without the SOA suffering from scalability or latency issues, which occur in conventional SOA implementations as the number of clients increase.

Abstract: A method for handling contact center requests can include the step of identifying a contact center request and a resource type to handle the request, where a resource of the resource type can be selected from a multitude of contact center resources. The contact center resources can include at least one enterprise resource and at least one provider resource. The request can be handled using the selected resource.

Abstract: A method for providing usage-based Web services can include the step of identifying a desired usage level at which a Web service is to be provided to a requestor before providing the Web service. A request for the Web service can be received from the requestor. Resources necessary to achieve the usage level can be determined. The Web service can be responsively provided in a dynamic fashion based upon the usage level.