146,632 research outputs found

    Supporting Virtual Enterprise Systems Using Agent Coordination

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    International audienceOpen environments like the Internet or corporate intranets enable a large number of interested enterprises to access, filter, process, and present information on an as-needed basis. These environments support modern applications, such as virtual enterprises and inter-organizational workflow management systems, which involve a number of heterogeneous resources, services, and processes. However, any execution of a virtual enterprise system would yield to disjoining and error-prone behavior without appropriate techniques to coordinate the various business processes. This paper reports on the design and implementation of a flexible agent-based framework for supporting the coordination of virtual enterprises and workflow management systems. The paper also shows how an agent coordination infrastructure, which is explained by social constraints, can impact on the engineering of highly dynamic virtual enterprises and workflow management systems by presenting a simple case study

    Research 2.0: Evolving Support for the Research Landscape

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    4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PresentationsDate: 2009-06-04 10:30 AM – 12:00 PMDate: 2009-06-04 10:30 AM – 12:00 PMWith the advance of big science and cyberinfrastructure, academic institutions are faced with the issue of how to support not just well funded initiatives, but all research projects on campus. The University of PEI Library has developed a robust framework in terms of strategy, policy, education and the development of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) in providing support for research. UPEI is a small academic institution with undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and generates close to $20 million in research funding annually. The recently produced Research Strategic Plan includes a number of recommendations for the provision of research infrastructure, a key to the development of the Library's role in providing the services and resources in this area. This is combined with a flexible approach to funding a centralized research infrastructure and the ongoing development of an open source research platform. The platform uses a Drupal/Fedora data repository and collaborative web environment that can accommodate a wide range of research requirements and also allow research groups to get up and running with as minimal or extensive an environment as appropriate. The session will includes examples of research groups from a range of disciplines using the VRE as well as next steps for the continued support of the research enterprise

    The strategy and realization of enterprise integration

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    University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology.In recent years we have experienced exponential growth in business innovation. emerging technology, and integration complexity. With this unprecedented growth, the priority of enterprise integration has shifted from patching solutions to the governance of agility. Enterprise integration mainly deals with interoperability between virtual and physical worlds, which is thorny by its very nature. In order to cope with rising complexity, interference coherence between business, service. and physical components is crucial. Instead of consolidation from fragmentation, an iteration approach is taken in driving concept and strategy into realization. The empirical statistics indicate that the anatomy of ontological research is essential for producing an overview of interoperability. The author's numerous research projects demonstrate a number of factors critical in generating higher productivity and lower risk. These factors include a higher visibility of atomic elements. a well-specified service, and a precise architectural alignment. By taking these successful factors into realization, this thesis proposes enterprise vertical integration, employing a three-step strategy of componentization, transformation, and virtualization. Componentization derives an ontology of atomic elements for the service-based foundation. In transformation. service components are produced from these raw elements, using a multi-discipline and three-dimensional approach to achieve component synthesis. The final step, virtualization, is the objective of enterprise integration. Virtualization establishes the enterprise skeleton and achieves a common-service mainstream in the industry. Experiential evidence indicates that this higher-level, three-step approach works effectively in minimizing risk and increasing productivity. There is particular benefit for projects of higher complexity and larger scale. Given the incessant business change inherent in our chaotic new age of computing, the three-step approach relies on a new framework to streamline realization and cope with project complexity. A Method, Evaluation, Techniques, and Application (META) framework addresses the interference between virtual and physical layers. In this initial process it develops component validation, analysis processes, and synthesis techniques for service transformation. It then develops service components and common services for service virtualization. This thesis proposes a four-pillared approach to support the META framework. It also proposes sub-area concepts such as "pattern" and "state" to enhance the capability of the framework before moving it into the industry mainstream. This thesis distinguishes itself from existing literature in that very few studies in this field address real enterprise-scale integration. None of the reviewed literature copes with the fundamental work of enterprise issues such as ontological research or high-level strategy as proposed by this thesis

    Modeling Virtual Organization Architecture with the Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology

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    While Enterprise Architecture Modeling (EAM) methodologies become more and more popular, an EAM methodology tailored to the needs of virtual organizations (VO) is still to be developed. Among the most popular EAM methodologies, TOGAF has been chosen as the basis for a new EAM methodology taking into account characteristics of VOs presented in this paper. In this new methodology, referred as Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology (VOBM), concepts developed within the ECOLEAD project, e.g. the concept of Virtual Breeding Environment (VBE) or the VO creation schema, serve as fundamental elements for development of VOBM. VOBM is a generic methodology that should be adapted to a given VBE. VOBM defines the structure of VBE and VO architectures in a service-oriented environment, as well as an architecture development method for virtual organizations (ADM4VO). Finally, a preliminary set of tools and methods for VOBM is given in this paper.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

    Sustainability assessment of supply chains with engineering services focus

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    The use of information and communication technologies to support inter-company collaboration in the form of virtual enterprise is a critical factor to the success of any business venture. Due to the dynamic nature of business partnership, the provision of communication infrastructure among the partners needs to be interoperable and fit for the purpose. This paper uses the case study research methodology to examine the e-collaboration patterns of five cases in which companies focus on providing knowledge intensive engineering services to customers. The supply chains have a vibrant structure and are modelled as virtual enterprises that are in different phases of development. Depending on the communication capabilities, individual partners in the virtual enterprise may have to invest heavily in order that they can participate in large scale projects. Companies without a competent communication technology profile need to consider what capability they should acquire and when that capability will be useful. The study concluded that a five-level communication framework can be used to assess the sustainability of the virtual enterprise and assist supply chain partners to consider whether they would invest to attain the acceptable level of competency to joi

    The future of enterprise groupware applications

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    This paper provides a review of groupware technology and products. The purpose of this review is to investigate the appropriateness of current groupware technology as the basis for future enterprise systems and evaluate its role in realising, the currently emerging, Virtual Enterprise model for business organisation. It also identifies in which way current technological phenomena will transform groupware technology and will drive the development of the enterprise systems of the future

    Component Based System Framework for Dynamic B2B Interaction

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    Business-to-business (B2B) collaboration is becoming a pivotal way to bring today's enterprises to success in the dynamically changing, e-business environment. Though many business-to-business protocols are developed to support B2B interaction, none are generally accepted. A B2B system should support different B2B protocols dynamically to enable interaction between diverse enterprises. This paper proposes a framework for dynamic B2B interaction. A B2B transaction is divided into the interaction part and business implementation part to support flexible interaction. A component based system framework is proposed,to support the B2B transaction execution. To support. dynamic B2B services, dynamic component composition is required. Service and component notions are combined into a composable service component. The composition architecture is also presented
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