ERA in Networked Enterprise
Indicative Research Areas per key area of the Networked Enterprise field
Based on a classification of the Networked Enterprise & RFID Unit (DG INSFO, D4), research on the Networked Enterprise field can be grouped in four key areas: (i) Collaborative Business Networks (CBN), (ii) Digital Ecosystems for Business Innovation (DBE), (iii) Ambient Intelligence Technologies for the Product Lifecycle – RFID (AITPL - RFID), (iv) Technologies for business networking concern those that enable networked organisations to be more competitive, innovative, open, flexible, and creators of value. Research areas: Reference models, engineering frameworks, and technologies for new business collaborative forms supporting organisations to identify and exploit new business potential, foster innovation and increase their knowledge through enhanced co-operation. Virtual Organisation breeding environments. Next generation e-business tools enabling secure and trusted collaboration between partners in real-time. It concerns technologies for Digital Ecosystems, assuming that an increasing number of business networks are composed of interconnected participants, who depend on each other for their mutual effectiveness and survival through embracing harmoniously the value chain of research-innovation-deployment policy. Research areas: The bio-inspired paradigm of digital ecosystem changes the approach to the development and usage of digital knowledge (components, services, applications, business solutions and revenue models) allowing its spontaneous self-organisation, composition, distribution, adaptation and evolution. It allows a scalable co-operative development and joined business exploitation; exploits synergies of the business ecosystems allowing global dynamic business networking and empowering SMEs. It also requires focused and integrated development of new technologies, concepts, models, digital environments, network architectures, models, formalisms, and standards. The research should be complemented by external deployment and innovation initiatives, which support the technology transfer, take-up and evolution of digital ecosystems with related services.
It concerns the improving of the knowledge of the product and production processes. In order to develop new product concepts and related business models that can contribute to the modernisation of many industries from both manufacturing and service sectors. Special emphasis is placed on research for RFID as the enabling technology towards the “Internet of Things”. Research areas: Technologies, methodologies and engineering concepts for holistic, collaborative, distributed and multidisciplinary product development, associated services and distributed global manufacturing processes. Technologies for "extended products" combining a product with services and enhancements that can improve the marketability or functionality of the product or enrich existing and enable new (business) processes along the full product life cycle. ICT architectures and platforms for the integrated enterprise to support massively distributed networked devices (e.g. enhanced RFID-based systems).
To enable networked business by giving enterprises the means to seamlessly and securely interoperate with each other.
Research areas: Interoperability reference architectures and associated methodologies, guidelines and best practices. Interoperability infrastructures, integration brokers, and Enterprise Service Buses. Cross-organisational business process modelling and execution. Tools and methods for MDA based development. Specific solutions for semantic interoperation. Service oriented architectures, service discovery and composition. Registries and repositories. Trust, contract, and security management enabling secure collaborative business processes. Business models for Enterprise Interoperability.
2. Digital Ecosystems for Business Innovation
01/10/2008 -