A Comparison of B2B e-Service Solutions

The Internet is evolving not only to provide information and e-commerce transactions, but also to act as the platform through which services are delivered to businesses and customers. These electronic services or e-services could become a key part of the value provided by many businesses [2, 5, 10]. At the core of this evolution is Extensible Markup Language (XML), which has emerged as the foundation of all architectures suggested for such services. XML simplifies the exchange of information by letting users define their own syntax and use underlying technologies of the Internet. However, while organizations can define XML syntax to solve their specific problems, the multitude of syntax (schemas) creates incompatibility problems with schemas developed by others. This is one of the reasons why major organizations are creating business-to-business (B2B) XML framework standards to enable interoperability. To overcome these problems, efforts are underway to develop standards for e-services including eCo by a consortium led by CommerceNet; RosettaNet by a consortium that includes IBM, Microsoft, EDS, SAP, Cisco systems, Compaq and Intel; BizTalk by Microsoft; e-speak by Hewlett Packard (HP), and several others. Sinc