Virtual Enterprise and Emissary Computing Technology

Abstract:

Integrated product teaming, concurrent engineering, supply-chain management, and build-to-order manufacturing are all examples of the growing interest in collective business engagements involving interorganizational collaboration. The pressing need to automate interorganizational collaboration is motivating the emergence of virtual enterprise technology to enable the rapid formation, execution, and dissolution of joint ventures within the confines of an information infrastructure supporting electronic data interchange and commerce. Virtual enterprise technology, in turn, is creating the need for new high-performance computation and communication strategies. Collectively known as emissary computing, these strategies use highly empowered servers called emissaries to represent and interconnect organizations participating in a joint business engagement. Emissary computing addresses organizational interactions and can be viewed as an extension of proxy computing that addresses more simple resource interactions (e.g., communication gateways, Web servers). Virtual enterprises and emissary computing are establishing new directions in information-processing architectures and paradigms, and form key enabling technologies for interorganizational collaboration.

Key Words and Phrases::

• Collaboration
• distributed component platforms
• information system infrastructures
• virtual enterprises

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Allen Mark Dewey

ALLEN MARK DEWEY ([email protected]) serves as director of the Duke University Design Automation Technology Center (DATC). The DATC conducts multidisciplinary research with major initiatives in composite microsystems, involving microelectromechanics and microelectrofluidics and Internet-aided engineering, involving secure electronic brokering and distributed component-based simulation. Dr. Dewey is an internationally recognized expert on VHDL and its related design automation technology base. As chairman of the U.S. Department of Defense Tri-Service (Army, Air Force, and Navy) VHDL Program, Dr. Dewey directed the original design of VHDL and guided its development as the first industry-wide standard hardware description language. Dr. Dewey has delivered invited lectures on VHDL in Japan and Eastern Europe and is author of the textbook Analysis and Design of Digital Systems with VHDL. Before joining Duke University, Dr. Dewey held several positions at IBM, including chief technologist for the National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols (NnW) Consortium. His responsibilities included developing a comprehensive portfolio of information technology services and products supporting virtual enterprises and global information initiatives. Dr. Dewey is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and a senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Richard Bolton

RICHARD BOLTON ([email protected]) is the general manager of the National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols Consortium, a group of leading U.S. information-technology providers and users. The members of the group have signed a cooperative agreement with the U.S. government to develop open software protocols to integrate computing environments across the U.S. manufacturing base. The protocols will enable organizations of any size to share information in order to work together on projects cooperatively and efficiently. Bolton has extensive experience as both a business-development and product-development manager for engineering design and manufacturing software applications at IBM. He has a B.S. in engineering mathematics from the U.S. Naval Academy and an M.S.E.E. from the University of Michigan.