A Reference Architecture for Automated Negotiations of Service Agreements in Open and Dynamic Environments

The provision of services is often regulated by means of agreements that must be negotiated beforehand. Automating such ne gotiations is appealing insofar it overcomes one of the most often cited shortcomings of human negotiation: slowness. In this article, we report on a reference architecture that helps guide the development of automated negotiation systems; we also delve into the requirements that must au tomated negotiation systems must address to deal with negotiations of service agreements in open environments. Finally, we analyse how well suited current software frameworks to develop automated negotiation systems are for negotiating service agreements in open environments. This approach is novel in the sense that, to the best of our knowledge, no previous article compares extensively automated negotiation frame works in the context of negotiating service agreements in open environ ments nor provides a reference architecture specifically designed for this scenario.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) TIN2006-00472Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel

Automatic Service Agreement Negotiators in Open Commerce Environments

There is a steady shift in e‑commerce from goods to services that must be provisioned according to service agreements. This study focuses on software frameworks to develop automated negotiators in open commerce environments. Analysis of the litera‑ ture on automated negotiation and typical case studies led to a catalog of 16 objective requirements and a conceptual model that was used to compare 11 state-of-the-art software frameworks. None of them was well suited for negotiating service agreements in open commerce environments. This motivated work on a reference architecture that provides the foundations to develop negotiation systems that address the previous requirements. A software framework was devised to validate the proposal by means of case studies. The study contributes to the fields of requirements engineering and software design, and is expected to support future efforts of practitioners and researchers because its findings bridge the gap among the existing automated negotiation techniques and lay the founda‑ tions for developing new software frameworksMinisterio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2006–00472Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009–07366Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel)Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2007–64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008–04718-

A bargaining-specific architecture for supporting automated service agreement negotiation systems

The provision of services is often regulated by means of agreements that must be negotiated beforehand. Automating such negotiations is appealing insofar as it overcomes one of the most often cited shortcomings of human negotiation: slowness. Our analysis of the requirements of automated negotiation systems in open environments suggests that some of them cannot be tackled in a protocol-independent manner, which motivates the need for a protocol-specific architecture. However, current state-of-the-art bargaining architectures fail to address all of these requirements together. Our key contribution is a bargaining architecture that addresses all of the requirements we have identified. The definition of the architecture includes a logical view that identifies the key architectural elements and their interactions, a process view that identifies how the architectural elements can be grouped together into processes, a development view that includes a software framework that provides a reference implementation developers can use to build their own negotiation systems, and a scenarios view by means of which the architecture is illustrated and validatedComisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) SETI (TIN2009-07366)Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel)Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2010-21744-C02-1Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2007-64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008-04718-

A bargaining-specific architecture for supporting automated service agreement negotiation systems

The provision of services is often regulated by means of agreements that must be negotiated beforehand. Automating such negotiations is appealing insofar as it overcomes one of the most often cited shortcomings of human negotiation: slowness. Our analysis of the requirements of automated negotiation systems in open environments suggests that some of them cannot be tackled in a protocol-independent manner, which motivates the need for a protocol-specific architecture. However, current state-of-the-art bargaining architectures fail to address all of these requirements together. Our key contribution is a bargaining architecture that addresses all of the requirements we have identified. The definition of the architecture includes a logical view that identifies the key architectural elements and their interactions, a process view that identifies how the architectural elements can be grouped together into processes, a development view that includes a software framework that provides a reference implementation developers can use to build their own negotiation systems, and a scenarios view by means of which the architecture is illustrated and validatedComisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) SETI (TIN2009-07366)Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-2533 (Isabel)Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2010-21744-C02-1Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2007-64119Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-02602Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-4100Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2008-04718-

Automated Negotiation for Provisioning Virtual Private Networks Using FIPA-Compliant Agents

This paper describes the design and implementation of negotiating agents for the task of provisioning virtual private networks. The agents and their interactions comply with the FIPA specification and they are implemented using the FIPA-OS agent framework. Particular attention is focused on the design and implementation of the negotiation algorithms

Autonomous Agents for Business Process Management

Traditional approaches to managing business processes are often inadequate for large-scale organisation-wide, dynamic settings. However, since Internet and Intranet technologies have become widespread, an increasing number of business processes exhibit these properties. Therefore, a new approach is needed. To this end, we describe the motivation, conceptualization, design, and implementation of a novel agent-based business process management system. The key advance of our system is that responsibility for enacting various components of the business process is delegated to a number of autonomous problem solving agents. To enact their role, these agents typically interact and negotiate with other agents in order to coordinate their actions and to buy in the services they require. This approach leads to a system that is significantly more agile and robust than its traditional counterparts. To help demonstrate these benefits, a companion paper describes the application of our system to a real-world problem faced by British Telecom

Obligations of trust for privacy and confidentiality in distributed transactions

Purpose – This paper aims to describe a bilateral symmetric approach to authorization, privacy protection and obligation enforcement in distributed transactions. The authors introduce the concept of the obligation of trust (OoT) protocol as a privacy assurance and authorization mechanism that is built upon the XACML standard. The OoT allows two communicating parties to dynamically exchange their privacy and authorization requirements and capabilities, which the authors term a notification of obligation (NoB), as well as their commitments to fulfilling each other's requirements, which the authors term signed acceptance of obligations (SAO). The authors seek to describe some applicability of these concepts and to show how they can be integrated into distributed authorization systems for stricter privacy and confidentiality control. Design/methodology/approach – Existing access control and privacy protection systems are typically unilateral and provider-centric, in that the enterprise service provider assigns the access rights, makes the access control decisions, and determines the privacy policy. There is no negotiation between the client and the service provider about which access control or privacy policy to use. The authors adopt a symmetric, more user-centric approach to privacy protection and authorization, which treats the client and service provider as peers, in which both can stipulate their requirements and capabilities, and hence negotiate terms which are equally acceptable to both parties. Findings – The authors demonstrate how the obligation of trust protocol can be used in a number of different scenarios to improve upon the mechanisms that are currently available today. Practical implications – This approach will serve to increase trust in distributed transactions since each communicating party receives a difficult to repudiate digitally signed acceptance of obligations, in a standard language (XACML), which can be automatically enforced by their respective computing machinery. Originality/value – The paper adds to current research in trust negotiation, privacy protection and authorization by combining all three together into one set of standardized protocols. Furthermore, by providing hard to repudiate signed acceptance of obligations messages, this strengthens the legal case of the injured party should a dispute arise