E-Business and Virtual Enterprises Managing Business-to-Business Cooperation

The fast progress in computer networks and their wide availability complemented with on one hand the "explosion" of the mobile computing and on the other hand the trends in the direction of ubiquitous computing, act as powerful enablers for new forms of highly dynamic collaborative organizations and emergence of new business practices. The first efforts in virtual enterprises (VE) were strongly constrained by the need to design and develop horizontal infrastructures aimed at supporting the basic collaboration needs of consortia of enterprises. Even pilot projects that were focused on specific business domains were forced to first develop some basic infrastructures before being able to develop their specific business models. Nowadays, although there is still a need to consolidate and standardize the horizontal infrastructures, the focus is more and more directed to the development of new vertical business models and the corresponding support tools. At the same time, in the earlier R&D projects, the attention was almost exclusively devoted to the operation phase of the VE life cycle, while now there are more activities addressing the creation phase, developing mechanisms to support the rapid formation of new virtual organizations for new business opportunities. In order to complete the life cycle, there is a need to also invest on support for VE dissolution.