The age of static business and slow information flow, when most decision was based on day-or week-old data, has come to an end. Now new technology helps organizations provide a more agile, flexible approach to business that was not technologically available five years ago. As a result, organizations are paying more attentions to supporting business process with the ability to adapt to the dynamic environment. This paper describes how the action of mobile agent enabled decision support in conjunction with the organizational trends, enables new practice in the field of e-Business. This is done to understand the magnitude of the e-business context problem and to suggest possible ways around the problem when building mobile agents. Therefore, a mobile agent approach is proposed in this paper to offer solution for mobile business and to manage complex business activities.mobile agent, mobile technologies, mobility, business

Stefănescu, Andy

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
  1 
How Regular Business Has Becomes Mobile Business.  
A Mobile Agent Approach 
 
 
Lecturer PhD Andy Ştefănescu 
University of Craiova, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration 
A.I.Cuza street, no13, Craiova, ROMANIA 
E-mail: andystefanescu73@yahoo.com 
 
Abstract 
The age of static business and slow information flow, when most decision was based on 
day-or week-old data, has come to an end. Now new technology helps organizations 
provide a more agile, flexible approach to business that was not technologically 
available five years ago. As a result, organizations are paying more attentions to 
supporting business process with the ability to adapt to the dynamic environment. This 
paper describes how the action of mobile agent enabled decision support in conjunction 
with the organizational trends, enables new practice in the field of e-Business. This is 
done to understand the magnitude of the e-business context problem and to suggest 
possible ways around the problem when building mobile agents. Therefore, a mobile 
agent approach is proposed in this paper to offer solution for mobile business and to 
manage complex business activities. 
Key words: mobile agent, mobile technologies, mobility, business 
JEL Classificiation: M21 
 
1. INTRODUCTION 
With the availability of improved wireless devices, better software, and broadening 
global-wireless infrastructure, companies world-wide are urgently pursuing mobile 
capabilities. Real-time adaptive processes are becoming the norm, and deploying mobile-
business infrastructure is now essential for cost cutting and increasing employee 
productivity. 
In short, the business world has become mobile. Mobile agents are currently a hot topic in 
the domain of e-business. Mobile agent technology can help to design innovative 
solutions in this domain by complementing other approaches, and improved network and 
data-management possibilities. In this paper we describe briefly a system that uses mobile 
agents to support mobile business for mobile computers.  
An agent is a program that is autonomous enough to act independently even when the 
user or application that launched it is not available to provide guidance and handle errors. 
According to the specialists’ opinion, the intelligent agents represent a new type of 
logicians, specialized. Taking into consideration their multiple abilities in progress, we  
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can assert that the intelligent agents will constitute one of the most attractive business 
opportunities (Wang, 2004:11). 
A mobile agent is an intelligent agent that can move through a heterogeneous network 
under its own control, migrating from host to host and interacting with other agents and 
resources on each, typically returning to its home site when its task is done (Steffen, 
2002:10). From a conceptual standpoint such mobile agents can also be regarded as 
itinerant, dynamic, wandering, roaming, or migrant. The rationale for mobility is the 
improved performance that can sometimes be achieved by moving the agent closer to the 
service available on the new host. From example, if an agent wants to obtain information 
from several sources on different platforms, it could send information requests to each of 
the platforms using the equivalent of a remote procedure call. However, if the volume of 
information exchanged with the remote site is large, issues of traffic and bandwidth must 
be considered. Also, the agent might be able to process the remote data more effectively 
than those services offered at the remote site. In either or both of these cases, relocating 
the agent to each of the various platforms could be a more efficient way of processing. 
We argue those mobile agents are a good paradigm for the context of mobile business and 
an excellent paradigm when mobile computers are involved. 
2. HOW REGULAR BUSINESS HAS BECOMES MOBILE BUSINESS 
In the business world, the e-business notion together with the notion of business 
intelligence and mobile business, are familiar terms, and already known by everybody. 
All these new technologies represent a new way to manage through electronic 
interconnection in an efficient and innovative way. Two key technologies, the 
Internet/Web and mobile communications, are transforming the way we contact business. 
Over the past few years, there is a tremendous effort in developing appropriate business 
models and technologies that will utilize these new technologies for business. Most of the 
current approaches work well with only one of the two. 
The ability to manage employee time and expense data quickly in this fast-paced age of 
increasing mobility is critical. In this context, mobile workers are constantly on the move-
and moving faster than ever-to provide more services, make more contacts, and generate 
more revenue. To do any less would give the competition an unfair advantage. A natural 
result of this increased mobility is a greater difficulty to keep track of employee working 
times and expenses. This is particularly the case at the companies with limited 
infrastructure in place to record information from the field, integrate it with main IT 
systems and send data back to mobile workers. Too often, excess time is spent on 
administrate tasks, the quality of data is poor, and customer service suffers. 
Healthy business depends on the regular receipt of critical data from the field and its input 
into back-end financial and human resources systems. It is vital that these processes run 
smoothly and efficiently, all the time.  
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The Mobile technologies offer opportunities and benefits to business through some 
devices (cell phones, PDA-personal digital assistant, pocket PC, laptops, digital 
projectors, IRV/voice portals, smart phones) which support a variety of interfaces and 
specific accessories. The increased use of the mobile technology led to the growth of 
mobile solutions demand and to their integration into the business processes. In this way, 
we can show a series of elements which competed into the transformation of the usual 
business into a mobile one: 
•  synchronized access, in real time to data, rates and information in the company; 
•  an efficient management of meetings, calendar, business contracts, folders; 
•  the reduction of the operational costs; 
•  selling efficiency due to mobile access at any time and place; 
•  applications can be easily and rapidly accessed no matter the space or time using 
a corresponding mobile device; 
•  the mobile applications offer the possibility to accomplish offline transactions 
and to synchronize them later. 
Businesses must accelerate the flow of information, analysis and decision making in order 
to be more responsive to fast-moving events. This business requirement will drive the 
augmentation of schedule-based technologies with event-based technologies - i.e., event-
based business intelligence (Lawton, 2006:5). Business intelligence solutions typically 
offer the ability to analyze quantitative data and produce information that monitors 
business performance. The analyses may be summaries or drill downs that present details 
on subsets of data. 
More broadly, business intelligence can include any information, such as articles and 
reports, which offers insights into an industry or company. Usually, quantitative data and 
text information are considered separately, but now quantitative analysis is being paired 
with information in text form to achieve a deeper understanding than either can provide 
alone. 
3. RELATED RESEARCH 
Research within agent-technologies usually explore different lab related studies regarding 
how to cope with the vast information overflow, using mobile agents mainly based on 
different rules-based mechanism. 
Mobile agents are an effective choice for many applications, for several reasons, Lange 
and Oshima, including improvements in latency and bandwidth of client-server 
applications and reducing vulnerability to network disconnection. Although not all 
applications will need mobile agents, many other applications will find mobile agents the 
most effective implementation technique for all part of their tasks. (Lange, 1999:4)  
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Kotz D. and Gray R. note that “we believe that current trends in Internet technology and 
usage lead to the use of mobile agents, several technical and non-technical hurdles must 
be addressed along the way. These hurdles represent significant but not insurmountable 
challenges ….. (Kotz, 1999:3) 
Many researchers extend the mobile-code concept to the mobile objects, in which an 
object (code and data) are moved from one host to another. The mobile-agent abstraction 
extends this notion further, by moving code, data, and a thread from one host to another. 
(Alagar, 2004:1) (Odell, 2005:8) 
Others have specifically suggested using mobile agents in mobile-computing 
environments. Samaras, Evripidou and Pitoura propose a framework for agents to interact 
with heterogeneous mobile database, but they focus on database consistency issues more 
than communication and transport issues. Mobile agents provide an efficient platform for 
distributed dynamic processing which works equally well with both the fixed and 
wireless networks (Samaras, 2000:9). 
Recently there are many mobile agent systems based on several slightly different 
semantics for mobility, security and communication. Researchers now need to begin to 
distil the best of these ideas from all of the proposed approaches and identify the 
situations where those approaches best apply. 
4. MOBILE AGENT ACTION. CASE STUDY 
Along the years many toolkits with mobile agent have been developed, even if this thing 
was implied a great research volume done by the software developers due to an increased 
lack of co-ordination among similar projects. The same area specialty literature faces 
different interpretations of the basic concept for the mobile agents. For instance: 
•  What a mobile agent should do from the program developer’s point of view: to 
implement a certain type object which should define several basic functions for 
the mobile agents such as: the communication and the migration, or to use any 
series-type object? 
•  What level of communication is necessary: a simple one among the agents that 
belong to the same agency or a complex one that allows long distance 
communication? 
•  What security level is necessary: one which protects the hosts against some 
malicious agents, or one which should protect the agents also against the 
malicious agencies? 
•  What kind of mobility is necessary? 
Sometimes even the most general research idea cannot be applied for another toolkit by 
the  mobile  agents  because  of  the  differences  between  the  basics  concepts.  Another 
obstacle is the number of different protocols of migration which exist nowadays. With the  
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exception of two toolkits (Aglets and Grasshopper) that support the emigration protocol 
MASIF suggested as standard, it is practically impossible to make two toolkits inter-
operational. 
 
4.1. Background 
In operation with the implementing of the great number of prototypes, few of these have 
been developed as mobile toolkits which could be used as applications on an industrial 
level. There are developed as monolithically systems, with a great number of functions 
and they are difficult to make configuration and usage. It is almost impossible to modify 
and extend such systems to use them successfully in any type of scenario of software 
application. 
To solve this situation, one of the most important challenges was that through Tracy 
project to develop a new model of architecture as basic for other mobile toolkits. In the 
same way Tracy can be adapted for domains of diverse applications. One can make Tracy 
configuration on software specifications and hardware also. If a certain plug-in is not 
necessary, one can skip this. In this way the quantity of necessary resources to rule an 
agency is diminished. The Tracy architecture offers support to place a mobile agent on 
other devices, because the services that are not necessary can be taken out while working. 
The code reusing is also supported. Tracy offers the following plug-ins in the basic 
configuration: 
•  Agency Shell – to communicate towards an agency through a textual interface; 
•  Agent Launcher - to start the agents automatically during the Tracy working 
process; 
•  Domain Manager - to create a logical network of agencies, in which the agents 
can communicate with the similar agencies; 
•  Message - for inter-agencies communication; 
•  Migration / for the agents mobility, using the Kalong component; 
•  Place – for the agents to know their working environment; 
•  Survival – to start the agents at a certain time span. 
4.2. Case description 
In this section we shell present examples of Tracy agents to show which interface should 
be implemented and which methods should an agent provide in order to be executed as a 
Tracy agency. Our study case consider an independent traveling salesperson carries a 
laptop when visiting customers and uses software that helps to select vendors and 
products and to place orders. Agents represent orders and travel to the corporation’s 
computers where they interact with billing, inventory, and shipping agents to arrange for  
  6
the purchase. Agents are also used to explore vendor catalogues and search for products 
that meet the customer’s needs.  
Using mobile agent application, mobile employees can enter data about work performed, 
business trips, and related expenses into a laptop and upload it later to main system. This 
mobile solution provides efficiency and data accuracy and it accelerates complex 
processes in areas such billing and financial accounting. 
For the proposed study case the followings two plug-ins are used: Survival – used by an 
agent to program its execution and Agency Shell – used by an agent to send messages to 
the user it upholds. 
Next we consider that both plug-ins have been correctly installed (their JAR folders are 
stocked in the plug-ins directory and the Agency Shell plug in has been configured upon 
the previous instructions. 
The Tracy agents need to implement the java.lang.Runnable interface which is basic 
interface for JDK and which defines only a run method, without parameters and returned 
value. This is the only interface that any stationary agent soft can implement. In Tracy we 
cannot distinguish differences among types or classes of agents as in other toolkits by the 
mobile agents. Tracy does not define commune classes for the software agents which 
provide access methods to services. If we want to programmer mobile agents, the Agent 
class should implement the interface java.io.Serializable which ensures that the agent 
object can be transferred in a stream. 
Now let’s enter into further details to start an agent. After the agent’s class has been 
initiated, the agent’s execution will be done through the run method. As the software 
agents are active and work autonomously, each agent is attributed a control thread from 
the thread group. An agent is not at the same level with the thread, does not passes the 
same thread for its life duration, but it is executed as thread as long as it is active. After 
the run method has been finished, the agent could close or pass in the waiting condition.  
The two conditions, running and waiting, but also the ways in which they change are 
important things to be known about the agent’s life cycle. After the run method of the 
agent which finished the execution, the agency should determine if the agent is set in 
waiting condition or not, after that it can be deleted from the agency. The rule is very 
simple: if the agent is registered by a service, then the agent is set in the waiting 
condition, otherwise it is deleted immediately. When the agent is in the waiting condition 
it is just a passive object which waits to be active again. Because it does not need an 
active tread of control in this condition, the thread is given back to the thread group and 
can be reused to execute other agents.  
The run method is the only obligatory method which the agents’ class needs to 
implement. It defines the agent’s behavior; this means the complex control of the flux 
inside the agent’s thread. So this method is the only starting point for the agent. In Tracy 
the agents are usually started several times along their existence. This thing makes it  
  7 
special from other toolkits of mobile agents where the main method of the agent is called 
just once. In Tracy an agent exchanges frequently the running and waiting conditions. 
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS 
The success or the failure of an organization depends on its ability to incorporate the new 
concepts, to assimilate the advanced technologies from e-business, business intelligence, 
mobile business, and to obtain advantages from the evolution of the whole: processes- the 
information technology.  
There is a stronger case for the use of the mobile agents in many mobile business 
applications. Moreover, there is a clear evolutionary path that will take us from current 
technology to widespread use of mobile code and agents within the next years. Once 
several technical challenges have been met, and more and more sites install mobile agent 
technology, use of mobile agents in a business context will expand rapidly.  
Mobile agents offer solutions to help companies for extend their existing applications 
beyond traditional way to make business, so they can reach any user, anytime, anywhere. 
Applications of mobile agent can provide the answer for companies that use mobile 
technologies and seek to support mobile business. 
 
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How Regular Business Has Becomes Mobile Business. A Mobile Agent Approach

How Regular Business Has Becomes Mobile Business. A Mobile Agent Approach

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