Framework for the negotiation of electronic contracts in e-business on demand

Abstract

This paper presents a realized framework for the negotiation of electronic contracts for e-business on demand, in which resource demands occur unpredictably and have to be fulfilled immediately. Proposals for services are exchanged between clients and service providers, and offers are negotiated and contracted. On demand service contracts mostly have a smaller trading volume as ordinary offline contracts, but their frequency of occurrence increases. Due to the high number of contracts they should be negotiated electronically, which lowers costs of the contract process notably. The software framework presented in this paper can support this process. The core components of the framework have generic interfaces. These interfaces can be used as a base for developing domain specific applications to implement negotiations of electronic contracts. The framework is part of a contract management system extending its functionality of negotiating contracts.