Traditional Technologies to Support Agile/Virtual Enterprise Integration

Since the mid-nineties, a considerable number of research and development projects and industrial initiatives have been undertaken to define infrastructures and supporting functionalities for Virtual Enterprise integration (i.e., computer supported tools and environments to support any or all of the following functions of the VE life cycle: VE design, search, negotiation, selection and integration of resources into a VE, and coordination functions). Examples of such developments towards VE integration include: • Agent technology, a promising approach to support electronic market brokerage and electronic negotiation; and • Environments for virtual enterprise integration, as the electronic marketplaces, most of them supporting transaction facilities, negotiation and electronic contracting.This chapter explains how “traditional” Internet-based tools (WWW search engines, WWW directories, electronic mail and e-marketplaces) can be used to support some of the functionalities required by the A/VE model, analyses costs of subcontracting, and introduces a cost-and-effort model that traduces the activities of A/VE integration that can be undertaken with the support of these traditional tools.