The hidden face of electronic commerce between enterprises (La face cachée du commerce électronique inter-entreprises)

Does the development of new means of circulating and processing information (notably the internet) ensure an immediate and easy access to information by every economic agent? Strategic information, that which is essential to define and implement the technical and financial strategies of organisations, is in the centre of the global competition between enterprises and becomes a real economic good. The industry of information expands strongly, notably over the internet. Electronic transactions between enterprises are characterised by the buying and selling of strategic information. But the access capacity to information depends on the quantity of human and financial resources which permits to large enterprises to acquire, process and protect information. Electronic commerce is in the hands of large size's enterprises Le développement de nouveaux moyens techniques de diffusion et de traitement de l'information (notamment Internet) assure-t-il un accès immédiat et facile à l'information pour tous les acteurs économiques ? L'information stratégique, celle qui est essentielle à la définition et à la mise en oeuvre des stratégies techno-financières des entreprises, est au coeur de la concurrence mondiale et devient un bien économique à part entière. L'industrie de l'information se développe fortement, notamment via Internet. Les transactions électroniques interentreprises sont caractérisés par l'achat et la vente d'informations stratégiques. Mais la capacité d'accès à l'information dépend de la quantité des ressources humaines et financières qui permet aux plus grandes entreprises d'acquérir, de traiter et de protéger l'information. Le commerce électronique est entre les mains des entreprises de grande taille.Internet, Information, information stratégique, transactions électroniques/ Internet, Information, Strategic information, electronic transaction

Implementing an Agent Trade Server

An experimental server for stock trading autonomous agents is presented and made available, together with an agent shell for swift development. The server, written in Java, was implemented as proof-of-concept for an agent trade server for a real financial exchange.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, intended for B/W printin

A Configurable Matchmaking Framework for Electronic Marketplaces

E-marketplaces constitute a major enabler of B2B and B2C e-commerce activities. This paper proposes a framework for one of the central activities of e-marketplaces: matchmaking of trading intentions lodged by market participants. The framework identifies a core set of concepts and functions that are common to all types of marketplaces and can serve as the basis for describing the distinct styles of matchmaking employed within various market mechanisms. A prototype implementation of the framework based on Web services technology is presented, illustrating its ability to be dynamically configured to meet specific market needs and its potential to serve as a foundation for more fully fledged e-marketplace frameworks

InterCloud: Utility-Oriented Federation of Cloud Computing Environments for Scaling of Application Services

Cloud computing providers have setup several data centers at different geographical locations over the Internet in order to optimally serve needs of their customers around the world. However, existing systems do not support mechanisms and policies for dynamically coordinating load distribution among different Cloud-based data centers in order to determine optimal location for hosting application services to achieve reasonable QoS levels. Further, the Cloud computing providers are unable to predict geographic distribution of users consuming their services, hence the load coordination must happen automatically, and distribution of services must change in response to changes in the load. To counter this problem, we advocate creation of federated Cloud computing environment (InterCloud) that facilitates just-in-time, opportunistic, and scalable provisioning of application services, consistently achieving QoS targets under variable workload, resource and network conditions. The overall goal is to create a computing environment that supports dynamic expansion or contraction of capabilities (VMs, services, storage, and database) for handling sudden variations in service demands. This paper presents vision, challenges, and architectural elements of InterCloud for utility-oriented federation of Cloud computing environments. The proposed InterCloud environment supports scaling of applications across multiple vendor clouds. We have validated our approach by conducting a set of rigorous performance evaluation study using the CloudSim toolkit. The results demonstrate that federated Cloud computing model has immense potential as it offers significant performance gains as regards to response time and cost saving under dynamic workload scenarios.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, conference pape

Network-based business process management: embedding business logic in communications networks

Advanced Business Process Management (BPM) tools enable the decomposition of previously integrated and often ill-defined processes into re-usable process modules. These process modules can subsequently be distributed on the Internet over a variety of many different actors, each with their own specialization and economies-of-scale. The economic benefits of process specialization can be huge. However, how should such actors in a business network find, select, and control, the best partner for what part of the business process, in such a way that the best result is achieved? This particular management challenge requires more advanced techniques and tools in the enabling communications networks. An approach has been developed to embed business logic into the communications networks in order to optimize the allocation of business resources from a network point of view. Initial experimental results have been encouraging while at the same time demonstrating the need for more robust techniques in a future of massively distributed business processes.active networks;business process management;business protocols;embedded business logic;genetic algorithms;internet distributed process management;payment systems;programmable networks;resource optimization