Trusted operational scenarios - Trust building mechanisms and strategies for electronic marketplaces.

This document presents and describes the trusted operational scenarios, resulting from the research and work carried out in Seamless project. The report presents identified collaboration habits of small and medium enterprises with low e-skills, trust building mechanisms and issues as main enablers of online business relationships on the electronic marketplace, a questionnaire analysis of the level of trust acceptance and necessity of trust building mechanisms, a proposal for the development of different strategies for the different types of trust mechanisms and recommended actions for the SEAMLESS project or other B2B marketplaces.trust building mechanisms, trust, B2B networks, e-marketplaces

Challenges and potential of the Semantic Web for tourism

The paper explores tourism challenges and potential of the Semantic Web from a theoretical and industry perspective. It first examines tourism business networks and explores a main theme of network interoperability - data standards- followed by technology deficiencies of Web 1.0 and 2.0 and Semantic Web solutions. It then explicates Semantic opportunities and challenges for tourism, including an industry perspective through a qualitative approach. Industry leaders considered that the new Web era was imminent and heralded benefits for supply and demand side interoperability, although management and technical challenges could impede progress and delay realisation

Intelligent Agents to Support Information Sharing in B2B E-Marketplaces

This article proposes an architecture to support information and knowledge exchange between collaborating business partners. The focus is on knowledge representation and exchange by intelligent agents to support collaborative business functions through agents that exchange problem-specific information in standardized formats. The article then shows the application of the proposed architecture in the context of an infomediary-based B2B E-marketplace

Towards the Semantic Grid: A State of the Art Survey of Semantic Web Services and their Applicability to Collaborative Design, Engineering, and Procurement

Today, organizations within the engineering and manufacturing domains place as much emphasis on the management and flow of knowledge through a value chain as they do commodities that are more tangible in nature. For example, parts suppliers in the Canadian automotive sector are often asked to collaborate with auto manufacturers in designing and engineering their product, instead of simply producing and supplying it. Such fundamental changes in the overarching economics of this industry have led to a greater focus on collaboration, both in terms of communicating across geographic divides to design components, as well as new requirements to merge heterogeneous data stores in order to manage this distributed procurement process. Our work on this project centred on finding solutions to the above by surveying the state of the industry, as well as assessing the potential employability of related tools in the workplace. It was concluded that the Access Grid (a low-cost, open-source videoconferencing platform) held significant potential to facilitate the high-quality sharing of audiovisual material, while semantic technologies (the “semantic web” and “semantic web services”) represented a feasible solution to the issues of data integration. When combined, these technologies form the “semantic grid”, the focus of this paper. Overall, it is concluded that the past and present business success of this ICT in the information management sector may, with future work, link databases with the visualization interface to provide concurrent cost-benefit analyses

Extended enterprise architecture with the FADEE.

Business-to-Business integration (B2Bi) is considered to be not merely an IT-issue, but also a business problem. This paper draws attention to the challenges companies within an Extended Enterprise are confronted with when integrating their systems. We primarily pay attention to coordination problems that may arise. To overcome these problems we propose the use of Enterprise Architecture descriptions. We discuss the powers of using Enterprise Architecture descriptions in integration exercises. It will become clear that doing Enterprise Architecture is no longer an option; it is mandatory. Furthermore, we present the FADEE, the Framework for the Architectural Description of the Extended Enterprise. This framework gives an overview of how companies can apply the Zachman framework to do Enterprise Architecture in the realm of the Extended Enterprise.Architecture; Business-to-Business integration; Companies; Coordination; Enterprise architecture; Extended enterprise; Extended enterprise architecture framework; FADEE; Framework; Integration; Problems; Research; Systems;

A Study of E-Business/E-Manufacturing Models

Traditional business methods are taking a drastic turn and changing to digitized businesses. Information and communication technology is being integrated into orthodox business practices and giving birth to e-business. E-business in turn, is looking up to e-business models for dynamic integration. The e-business concept was first explored. It was broken down into its smaller entities to make for a clearer and better understanding. Components of an electronic business were identified, and e-commerce was understood to be a subset of e-business. It was established that for a business to be e-business enabled, it required information and communication technology (ICT) to be integrated into its brick and mortar business practice. This showed that the e-business concept was not replacing traditional business practices but improving on it. The e-manufacturing business practice was also researched. This practice was found to be in essence e-business, but in the manufacturing context. It showed that e-manufacturing made for a dynamic integration of the complex manufacturing business practice in real-time. It linked shop floors to top floors, as well as all the other areas of the whole manufacturing supply chain. Adequate relevance was established for designing e-business and e-manufacturing models. This was achieved through rigorous literature review as well as a questionnaire survey. A hypothesis design and test based on the literature review was made to ascertain what models are utilized and in what context. Currently used models in different company sectors were discovered, and their subsequent benefits identified. Also reasons behind the adoption of the different models in the firms investigated were identified. Barriers associated with the e-business practice as well as the implementation of an e-business model were also identified. A measurement system was utilized to ascertain if the investigated models met that stated in the literature (i.e. product innovation, infrastructure and the network of partners, customer relation, and finance). This was adopted from that presented in the literature review. Based on the study, a conclusion was drawn and recommendations suggested.

Ontology-based services for agents interoperability

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. 2006. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Port

Redefining B2B Relationship Marketing: Insight from postmodern Alibaba

The cultural and philosophical movement of modernism has defined contemporary marketing knowledge, constructing a powerful narrative that has conceptually bound, yet semantically separated business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) marketing knowledge. Perceived paradigm shifts towards relationships, and the birth of relationship marketing are argued to be no more than an evolution of modern marketing, yet at the heart of relational constructs sit the very features modernism seeks to marginalise in the search for truth and establishment of power structures. Indeed, while B2C marketing has embraced postmodern thinking in consumer culture theory recently, relationship marketing at the B2B level remains conceptually hinged to modern marketing. Using the lens of the postmodern marketing literature, this conceptual paper investigates the rise of China’s Alibaba, and uses this case as a vehicle to argue for relationship marketing knowledge to embrace postmodern thinking and redefine how it should advance in the future