Event-driven service coordination for business process integration in ubiquitous enterprises

The Internet has improved service-oriented enterprises to allow for real-time enterprises, collaborative process management, and supply chain integration. However, ubiquitous enterprise environments are becoming more and more complicated since a variety of communication devices are emerged and interconnected to the existing enterprise systems. Service-oriented architecture based on web services technology provides a promising platform from which enterprises can coordinate seamlessly with e-Services in heterogeneous information systems. Nevertheless, adopting the architecture for ubiquitous enterprise environments poses some challenges since the wireless/wired systems around the enterprise may dynamically interact in the network and cause a considerable amount of meaningful state changes (called "events"). In this paper, a methodology that uses event-driven service technology and active rule processing is introduced for business process integration of ubiquitous enterprises. The event-driven approach to business process integration can supplement the service-oriented enterprise architecture by facilitating real-time event processing and distributed service coordination. We illustrate the proposed architecture by applying it to an international post-sales service company that sells electronic products. (c) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.