What will be...

As defined in Dr. Dertouzous' "What Will Be. How the new world of information will change our lives", information marketplace is "...collection of people, computers, communications, software and services that will be engaged in the intraorganizational and interpersonal information transactions of the future. These transactions will involve the processing and communication of information under the same economic motives that drive today's traditional marketplace for material goods and services." Recently, in Dr. Spring's "Information Marketplace Design", he said "An information marketplace is a software system with modularized supporting functionality in loosely coupled and related services." Both of them emphasized the communications and services, which make an information marketplace possible.

In contrast to other infrastructures such as the electrical grid or the highway network, where anybody can use them very easily, they are very widely distributed, and they are very inexpensive to use, the information marketplace and the infrastructure upon which it is based exist today in an embryonic form, and are not yet at the state where they are totally flexible and user friendly, But we believe the communications infrastructure will be the same way very easy to use in the future (computers will respond to voice commands, for example, and be able to interpret requests for information or services easily), ubiquitously available to everyone, and totally incorporated into our daily lives. We will use a personal network called a "bodynet," to talk on the phone, watch TV, read e-mail, and take pictures from wherever we are. In our workplaces, future innovations will increase productivity: Employees in different locations will be able to do group work together and order merchandise from around the world via e-forms. Our governments will link to a world network to engage in issues of diplomacy, trade, tourism, and more. Etc.

Over time, companies have moved from just publishing information on the Internet to integration of the web with business systems. This transformation includes internal integration of transactions to ultimately transform the way business is conducted. Through the use of external integration and dynamically adapting business processes to "real-time" changes in business requirements, companies can begin to realize the value from cross-enterprise collaboration. Also, many enterprises want transforms interactions both within the organization and with external trade partners. They want to allow various ecosystem members to collaboratively design, source, build, market, and sell products and services faster and more efficiently than ever before. This is collaborative commerce, which extends existing e-Business and B2B capabilities to include many new areas of strategic value. Executing on collaborative commerce enables enterprises to move beyond existing business models, fundamentally changing the dynamics of the ecosystems.

Although many vendors and customers already are electronically integrated, such as standard EDI, there is no provision for handling exceptions. So, we need a well-developed technical infrastructure to enable all the business requirements above. This platform should be service oriented, scalable, reconfigurable, and utilize common components that, when combined, provide back-end application connectivity and cross-enterprise process integration for the extended enterprise -- facilitating automation of process heuristics, workflow, roles, and procedures. This service-oriented platform will also allow modular build out of various processes thus making aggregate core information from different sources accessible to all process participants. It will provide rapid feedback updates and facilitate rapid response to achieve the benefits of collaboration.

In our future information marketplace platform, all required transactions or communications are routed through the marketplace to the collaborative framework layer, where the trading partner can accept or modify the details of the transaction. If the transaction's details are modified, the transaction is automatically routed back to the originator for approval. There is no limit on the number of revisions that can occur. In this manner, potential problems in the supply chain can be resolved collaboratively before material disruptions occur by allowing trading partners to respond with alternatives beyond a simple accept or reject.