Establishing virtual enterprises by means of mobile agents

Electronic Commerce is expanding from the simple notion of Electronic Store to the notion of Virtual Enterprises (VE) where existing enterprises dynamically form temporary alliances, joining their business in order to share their costs, skills and resources in supporting certain activities. Two fundamental problems in VE are (1) how a VE is established and (2) how information is shared among the VE participants in a control and efficient manner. Currently, existing enterprises are using workflows to automate their operation integrating their information systems and human resources. Thus, in this paper, we view the establishment of a VE as a problem of dynamically expanding and integrating workflows in decentralized, autonomous and interacting workflow management systems. Its focus is on the idea of mobile agents called adlets and their use in establishing VEs that involves advertising, negotiating and exchanging control information and data as well as its management.