Implementing Next Generation e-Business Platforms for Heterogeneous SME Environments

Ever since the adoption of Internet and the relevant Internet-Based technologies by enterprises into their everyday business practise the vision of totally automated electronic transactions has been the Holy Grail of their efforts. In spite of competitive advantages, such as reduced transactional cost, seamless information flow, and better communication, the creation of a system clearly oriented towards promoting interoperability of existing systems and facilitating electronic transactions between partners of diverse nature still remains elusive for the majority of enterprises, especially for small and medium ones. Drawbacks, such as the high technical complexity of the existing solutions, the need for intervention of third-party systems in the transactions, the mandatory adoption of proprietary standards and practises have characterised this first generation of platforms for electronic transactions. Such problems can largely be attributed to the adopted architectures – primarily peer to peer and server based – that impose specific preconditions in the design and implementation of the systems. The present work is an attempt to define and justify a novel platform that shares common elements with peer to peer and server based approaches and relies on emerging technologies and standards in order to achieve application to application interconnection and seamless information flow directly among heterogeneous systems