| There is currently a lot of activity to propose standards for cross-organizational application integration, such as standards for web service description, coordination and composition. This will eventually lead to software components that implement these standards. However, very little attention is paid to how to actually use this new technology. To use this technology, business processes must be designed that coordinate applications across organization boundaries. Designing these coordination processes is difficult because they are executed by software owned by different profit centers, that may not all trust each other. Each business partner wants to make a profit by executing its part of the process, and may require safeguards that the other partners perform their part of the process as promised. As a result, a process that makes sense when performed within one organization, may be impossible to perform when attempted cross-organizationally. The research problem to be investigated in COOP is when a coordination process is correct with respect to a networked business model that is profitable to all partners, and that allows for different levels of trust among the partners. Our solution builds upon our previous research in the design of profitable business networks. In COOP, we will extend this by defining and formalizing a correctness notion of a coordination process with respect to a profitable business network design, and provide tool support for this. |
