Adaptive business network systems: A service-oriented architectural approach

Abstract

Business environments have become increasingly complex and unpredictable. Business is facing turbulence in an environment that includes social, political, technical and economic challenges. IT is developing faster than can be predicted, along with customers' constant changes in demands and living patterns, and businesses must respond to this complex and dynamic environment in order to survive and be competitive. The traditional business network lacks the adaptability to rapidly reconfigure its strategy, structure, business process, and systems to respond to environmental and customer change. To meet these challenges, organizations need to form adaptive networks that provide businesses with the capability to collaborate across organizational boundaries and change their business strategies and processes to the needs of the environment. Over the years, researchers have proposed numerous adaptive and agile frameworks and systems to support Adaptive Business Networks (ABNs), but have not comprehensively integrated these diverse aspects in a holistic fashion to deliver a fully functional ABN system (ABNS). In this paper we propose an ABNS framework that attempts to fulfill such requirements.