Collaborative business process technologies

Abstract

Tremendous developments in data storing, processing and communication over the last two decades have made unprecedented impact on how most enterprises operate, develop future business strategies and deal with day to day operations. Businesses are increasingly moving towards extensive automation of their private and public processes. This automation takes the form of complex interactions between heterogeneous and autonomous systems within the enterprise and often cross multiple organizations. Controlling these complex interactions in order to effectively manage collaborative business processes is known to be a critical yet difficult problem using current technology solutions. Consequently, the areas of research are multi-faceted ranging from security, reliability and transactional support, quality of service guarantees, process validation and optimisation, to data modelling, repository management, and semantic integrity of terminology used. Workflow Management Systems delivered effectively in the area of process enforcement, offering a clear separation of business process logic from component applications involved in process execution, thereby responding to the well-established need for application integration. The complementary role of workflow systems in supporting advanced database functions, offered a powerful environment for information systems architects. It is an observed phenomenon that a new IT solution often triggers additional, and even more advanced user requirements, which probably would not be discovered if the current systems functionality would not be so widely available. This pattern can be clearly observed in the context of workflow technology evolution. It is time now for an even more advanced and rich level of integration facilities. It should be possible to form new business processes out of pre-existing fully operational workflows at different sites for various business partners with process owner controlled levels of data disclosure, and