From Workflows to Service Composition in Virtual Enterprises

Abstract

Workflow technologies have been used extensively to support process-based integration of activities within enterprises and are at the core of emerging Enterprise Integration Platform (EIP) technologies. Recently, a new abstraction of electronic services has begun to receive a lot of attention among researchers and in the vendor community. Electronic services provide the basis for creation of virtual enterprises (VE), which combine services from multiple providers. In this talk, we will discuss the advances that are needed to provide support for VEs. These include the ability to advertise, broker, synchronize and optimize the services. We will discuss the infrastructure needed to support VE application, show a prototype demo, and list important research problems that need to be solved.