Plug and do business and the European R&D programmes

Interoperability is perhaps the most critical issue for organisations that have started or are looking to do business electronically. For organisations to do business over the Internet, they must communicate and effect electronic exchanges with a wide range of business partners. E-business is more than buying and selling transactions over the Internet. It involves new forms of collaboration in which business processes, resources, skills and knowledge are shared. Today, the poor level of interoperability of business applications Impedes the adoption of this new form of collaboration in particular the forms based on loosely coupled associations of businesses over the Internet for many organisations. The paper summarises the main outcomes of an expert discussion group which has been hosted by the European Commission's Information Society Technologies R&D Programme with a view to providing the framework for the development of a radically new basis for interoperability of Internet-enabled business (applications). The aim of this group is to build a wide consensus on the strategy and approaches which could be implemented through a research Initiative supporting the vision of "Plug and Do Business" within the proposed new 6th Framework Programme for Research, for the years 2002-2006. Three technology-oriented themes have been identified so Jar: i) Modelling internet-worked organisations, ii) Open architectures supporting inter-enterprise collaboration and iii) Ontologies.