CRAFT: A Framework for Integration Facilitation in Cross-Organisational Distributed Systems

The increasing proliferation of complex electronic services, particularly in the business-to-business area, entails the creation and management of complex, cross-or-ga-nisational distributed systems. An important chal-lenge with such systems concerns the integration of dif-ferent core and administrative services into a consistent whole. Furthermore, there is a need for extra func-tionality to facilitate the provision and consumption of the re-su-l-ting service inside as well as outside the organi-sation. This functionality may have to deal with a host of issues such as: facilitating co-operation while maintai-ning autonomy, remuneration, monitoring, audi-ting and ma-nagement of the integrated service, and the translation be-tween internal and external models, processes and in-for-mation. All the above are aimed at ensu-ring that the con-tractual obligations of the business rela-tion-ship are met. We need a component that supports the inte-gra-tion of the core and administrative services while provi-ding ad-ded functionality concerned with crossing the orga-ni-sa-tional boundary. This component is termed an "integration facilitator".

The CrossFlow project dealt with the dynamic estab-lishment of cross-organisational business relationships. CRAFT (CrossFlow Runtime Framework Technology) provides a framework to build integration facilitators. By using this framework, the core and administrative services of an organisation can be quickly integrated and extended to create different business level services to suit the changing needs of organisations and their dynamic business partnerships.