Contract-Driven Creation and Operation of Virtual Enterprises

This paper examines the support needed for dynamically creating and managing contract-driven virtual enterprises. Our approach to virtual enterprises views contracts as the central theme that runs throughout the enterprises' life cycle and touches upon all major aspects thereof. A Contract Framework integrates the concepts and entities necessary for the contract centred support. A combination of Virtual Market technology and an advanced Matchmaking Engine facilitate the creation of service markets where matching business partners can find each other. A set of pre-prepared Internal Enactment Specifications provide the mapping of the contract to an organisational blueprint, specified in terms of the internal language, resources and infrastructure of each organisation. This complements the deferred selection of a business partner, by facilitating the dynamic and automatic configuration of the Contract Enactment Infrastructure of the respective organisations and linking them. Advanced Contract Enactment Infrastructure technology allows business processes to cross organisational boundaries while maintaining a considerable degree of service monitoring and control by the consumer.

The integration of our proposed framework and approach supports the creation and management of highly dynamic service markets with automated, fine-grained interaction between organisations, thereby fulfilling the flexibility and efficiency requirements of modern e-business.

Keywords: virtual markets, virtual enterprises, cross organisational business processes, contract framework, service contracts, contract matchmaking, contract enactment infrastructures, dynamic enactment infrastructure configuration