Introduction: Advances in E-business Engineering

(First paragraph) E-business is more than just e-commerce. It is one of the most challenging areas for industry and research communities. E-business has evolved from business-to-business, business-to-customer, customer-to-business, customer-to-customer, and business-to-government systems to the integrated and collaborative business services among various information systems and e-marketplaces. In this evolving process, integrated e-business systems and their related supporting platforms have to be rapidly designed and developed in order to meet different requirements. A variety of e-business engineering paradigms and technologies have been developed to tackle these challenges. There are many research issues needed to be addressed. These issues include heterogeneous services integration, disparate e-business functions collaboration, semantic level e-business messaging, etc. Today, not only large companies, but also medium or small-sized companies are learning that e-business is a required component of doing business. As a result, there is a growing demand for insights into challenges, issues, and solutions related to the design, implementation, and management of e-business systems