Enabling framework for service-oriented collaborative networks

In today's economy, collaboration and co-development among organizations has evolved from the traditional format of static supply chains to the dynamic formation of federated organization networks. Networking among business partners has proven to yield lower costs, higher quality, larger service/product portfolio, faster delivery, and more agility. However, the pace by which these trend changes need to occur has raised the demand on ICT-enhanced support for inter-organization collaboration, establishing the area of collaborative networks (CNs).
We particularly address in our research two forms of CNs, namely the VO (Virtual Organization) and the VBE (VO Breeding Environment). To enrich collaboration among potentially distributed partners, a challenging area for CN research is focused on new approaches to specification, sharing and integration of organizations business processes. Aiming to address this challenge, in our research the promising paradigm of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is investigated and applied as the base for enhancement of organizations collaboration. However, we argue that the current implementations of the SOA approach do not sufficiently support CN requirements and do not deliver the expected advantages for organizations sharing and integrating their business services. We therefore introduce a new reference framework - the service orientated collaborative networks (SOCN), as a customization of the traditional architecture and generic model of SOA, in order to efficiently support service oriented CNs.