Implementation Options for Virtual Organizations (original) (raw)

Distributed E-Business Architecture for Sme Communities – Requirements and Solutions for Request Based Virtual Organisations

2005

This paper explores the challenges of constructing a distributed e-business architecture based on the concept of the Request Based Virtual Organisation (RBVO), a B2B value network which is dynamically formed upon demand to meet identified business opportunities. This approach offers significant advantages over the traditional B2B marketplace approach where an intermediate entity dictates particular marketplace policies, provides infrastructure and ensures the virtual presence of the participants in the community. In this paper, we investigate the steps involved in achieving interdomain end-to-end business collaboration using the structural concepts of the RBVO by presenting a reference architecture and framework (realization of that architecture in a particular class of environments). The practical work was done within the framework of the EU-sponsored LAURA project, which aims to facilitate interregional zones of adaptive electronic commerce using, where applicable, the potential o...

Virtual enterprises-building blocks for dynamic e-business

2001

Dynamic e-business, as envisioned by several industry analysts and corporate leaders, involves the rapid teaming of companies with both familiar and new business partners in pursuit of specific market opportunities. For realizing this new generation business model, the ability to form, operate, and disband virtual enterprises will be the single-most important requirement. These short-lived, opportunity-based organizations leverage the individual capabilities of several member companies to form virtual enterprises that have resources equivalent to a traditional vertically integrated corporation. Before successfully applying this business model, however, several issues need to be resolved, such as building trust and a collaborative attitude amongst member companies, developing the e-commerce infrastructure for handling engineered-to-order products and services, building optimal coalitions for the job, etc. This paper discusses our experiences in developing a web-based infrastructure for creating, operating, and eventually dissolving virtual enterprises. The primary operators of this infrastructure will be market makers offering custom products and services in various industries as well as corporations involved in bringing new products to the market

Request Based Virtual Organisations (RBVO): An Implementation Scenario

IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, 2005

Evolving e-commerce technologies increasingly enable organisations to participate in different types of network forms or in electronic markets with previously unidentified trading partners. Virtual organisations (VO) take different forms, have varying lifecycles and involve different scope and depth of relationships. This paper examines the literature in terms of the terminology of virtual organisations, the business drivers, the common theoretical concepts and models as well as the enabling technologies. A specific form of VO, Request Based Virtual Organisation (RBVO), is then considered in relation to these VO variants, particularly as realised through the practical work done within the framework of the EU sponsored LAURA project that facilitates interregional zones of adaptive electronic commerce.

E-Business and Virtual Enterprises: Managing Business-to-Business Cooperation, IFIP TC5/WG5.3 Second IFIP Working Conference on Infrastructures for Virtual Organizations: Managing Cooperation in Virtual Organizations and Electronic Busimess towards Smart Organizations, December 4-6, 2000, Florian...

Ifip Tc5 Wg5 3 Publications, 2000

In the Virtual Enterprise (VE) paradigm, enterprises must share and exchange a part of their internal local information in order to interact and cooperate with each other towards the achievement of the global VE goals. However, the information access level for every VE partner depends on several "determining features" such as the cooperation relationships, degree of trust, the function of the enterprise in the VE, and contractual/legal agreements, among other issues. Considering these aspects, every enterprise needs to precisely define the appropriate access rights and visibility levels on its information individually for every other VE partner. This paper focuses on the VE access rights definition mechanism designed and implemented within the Distributed Information Management System in the context of the ESPRIT project PRODNET II.

An Electronic Market Architecture for the Formation of Virtual Enterprises

1999

Economic organisations are facing new challenges due to the proliferation of Electronic Markets where competition and responsiveness are issues that will determine organisation's economic survival. A Virtual Enterprise is a temporary network of individual enterprises, which, due to its higher flexibility and agility is capable of effectively responding to those challenging requirements. This paper proposes an Electronic Market system's architecture together with a multi-criteria negotiation protocol for Virtual Enterprise formation.

WISE: Business to Business E-Commerce

Information Systems Management, 2000

The Internet and the proliferation of inexpensive computing power in the form of clusters of workstations or PCs provide the basic hardware infrastructure for business to business electronic commerce in small and medium enterprises. Unfortunately, the corresponding software infrastructure is still missing. In this paper we show a way to develop appropriate tools for electronic commerce by describing the approach we have taken in the WISE project (Workflow based Interned SErvices). The goals of WISE are to develop and deploy the software infrastructure necessary to support business to business electronic commerce in the form of virtual enterprises. The idea is to combine the tools and services of different companies as building blocks of a higher level system in which a process acts as the blueprint for control and data flow within the virtual enterprise. From this idea, the final goal is to build the basic support for an Internet trading community where enterprises can join their services to provide added value processes.

A p2p-based infrastructure for virtual-enterprise’s supply-chain management

2004

This paper proposes and describes a prototype of a peer-to-peer based infrastructure to support virtual enterprise's supply chain management. Because of a virtual enterprise is composed of autonomous, distributed, and continuously evolving entities, we have naturally modelled each business entity like a peer's agent platform that can play several roles according to the task to be fulfilled. To this end, we describe and apply such roles, required to the organizational architecture, into a virtual storehouse scenario. * We thanks D. Iacobucci for suggestions and useful discussions about these topics, M. Orlando and A. Petrini for their contribution to the implementation phase.

Realizing a new e‐commerce tool for formation of a virtual enterprise

Industrial Management & Data Systems, 2003

This paper presents a methodology for the development of a new tool for the formation of a virtual enterprise. The formation phase mainly deals with inviting potential collaborators to virtual enterprise, and developing a supply chain; supply chain development is done collaboratively by all the collaborating enterprises. The methodology for realizing a new e‐commerce tool is primarily aimed at satisfying the needs of small‐to‐medium‐sized enterprises, and has the following features: Web‐based; inexpensive; supports collaboration; and increases pipeline visibility and demand visibility.

An evolving plug-and-play business infrastructure for networked organisations

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2009

This paper introduces a distributed and open ICT infrastructure that is being developed in the ECOLEAD IST IP project to help members of Collaborative Networks in doing businesses and collaborations more efficiently. ICT-I design relies on the service oriented architecture paradigm and it is implemented with web-services. ICT-I services are to be used on demand and pay-per-use models. It is flexible to support an easy entrance of new services and the withdrawn of others. So far the type of organizations envisaged by the proposed ICT-I are virtual breeding environments, virtual organizations and professional virtual communities. This paper details the ICT-I requirements, its architecture and services as well as implementation issues. Conclusions and current challenges are presented in the end.