A MEDIATOR FOR E-BUSINESS

Sven Apel, Gunter Saake

Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany

Sebastian Herden, Andr

e Zwanziger

Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany

Keywords:

Agents, Content Addressable Network (CAN), decentralized service-oriented architectures, e-business, Medi-

ator, Partner Relationship Management.

Abstract:

Partner Relationship Management Systems are implemented in many companies to improvethe relations to im-

portant partners along the value-chain. The goal is to differentiate themselves from competitors and their prod-

ucts. That leads to different types of relationships between customers, suppliers and other market-participants.

Some of these types require a mediator, that connects the partners, if a direct connection is impossible. This

article introduces the ideas of Partner Relationship Management within E-Business, and proposes a system

called Mediator, which is able to tie together business partners in a distributed environment. This article

presents the two parts of the mediator (communication system and information system) as well as their key

technologies (an agent-based system based on a Peer-to-Peer network).

1 INTRODUCTION

In many lines of business, sales departments have

been aimed at products and were assisted by mass-

marketing activities. But the resulting impersonal

contact to customers turned to be ineffective (Ritter,

2003). A reason for that was the customers’ behav-

ior, to change former accepted business connections

quickly. It has been made easy by trends toward glob-

alization and by increasing substitutability of prod-

ucts in mass-markets. This development is going to

be stopped by differentiation in products and in per-

sonalizing the contact to customers.

Literature about Customer Relationship Man-

agement (CRM) and Supplier Relationship Man-

agement (SRM) proposes to utilize the Inter-

net as one communication-channel in Relationship-

Management. Doing so, the complete Customer-

Buying-Cycle can be covered. In the sense of E-

Business it means that the integration of both com-

panies should be so uninterruptive in media-selection

as possible. Hence a mediator is needed, which can

reﬂect the relationship between both companies and

can pick up and support the beneﬁts of both ideas of

Relationship-Management.

2 E-BUSINESS

E-Business means, the integrated execution of

all business-processes in a company which can

be automatized, with the help of information-

and communication-technology (I&C-Technologies).

This deﬁnition shows that E-Business on the one

hand inﬂuences transaction-costs through integration

of business-processes. On the other hand it affects the

pass-through time and respectively the transmission-

costs by the automated execution of business-

processes with information- and communication-

technology. Because of integration ﬁrst takes place

on the organizational site, which can, if techno-

logically possible, be automated with the help of

I&C-Technologies, a successfully realization of E-

Business is bound on organizational adjustments,

e.g., process-, task- and data-integration (Herden and

Zwanziger, 2004). Therefore E-Business could in

fact generate potentials of success, but they can only

be implemented through restructuring organizational

workﬂows (Thome, 2002). This is well-founded in

the theory of informational added-values (Kuhlen,

1995).

A company has relations along the value-

chain, from pre-suppliers, via direct suppliers, to

distribution-partners, business-customers and end-

427

Apel S., Saake G., Herden S. and Zwanziger A. (2005).

A MEDIATOR FOR E-BUSINESS.

In Proceedings of the First Inter national Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 427-430

DOI: 10.5220/0001229904270430

 SciTePress

customers. Additionally companies build up good re-

lations to competitors too, because of changes and

trends in markets, e.g., standards etc. (Riemer and

Klein, 2002).

The choice of the appropriate business-partner and

the exhaustion of potentials of success are realized

by Partner Relationship Management (PRM). By that,

steps in planning, realization and controlling of in-

terorganizational relations to business-partners, with

the aim to save and improve the competitiveness of a

company are understood (Riemer and Klein, 2002).

2.1 Mediator

The mediator presented in this paper, is a technical

system, which has to support the user, e.g. a company

at E-Business. It should depict a market, on which

market participants shall trade goods. Simon explains

a market as an artifact (Simon, 1997; Sunder, 2004),

a tool made by humans in social evolution or through

construction, to trade goods. That market owns an

inner and an outer environment. The rules and struc-

tures of the market lie inside. That includes a consis-

tent language to exchange messages with other par-

ticipants, a mechanism to deﬁne and implement the

distribution of these messages, and rules that deﬁne

messages, which are valid in each state of the market.

The outer environment is made by the market partic-

ipants, who are deﬁned by their preferences, decision

rules and their endowment.

Therefore, the mediator is made of partici-

pants (suppliers and customers), which maintain

communication-connections, to cover the Customer

Buying Cycle. It is split into a communication system

(inner environment) and a set of information systems,

which are doing information processing for each par-

ticipant (outer environment).

The inner environment of the market is imple-

mented as a Peer-to-Peer network. This architecture

allows to distribute market participants on different

computers over the network (e.g. the Internet). The

outer environment of the market is based on agent-

technology. Agents act on behalf of their users and

shall support users in decision making (e.g. to select

the right partner). Every user can communicate with

her/his agent over different communication channels

(e.g. mobile and stationary devices). Figure 1 shows

a conceptional overview of the mediator system.

To participate in the market, the agent needs knowl-

edge about the inner environment that is realized as an

interface toward communication system. Analogous

to humans’ information processing, agent’s behavior

is also located in meta-cognition and is controlled by

the Application Processor. Rules for decision mak-

ing, preferences and endowment are located within

this meta-cognition and form the outer environment

of the market.

response

generator

input

filter

input

filter

response

generator

Sensor Effector

Sensor

Effector

DWH

Application Processor

and

Working Memory

Information

System (Agent)

Communication

System (Network)

Channels

Metacognition

System

ERP

Figure 1: Mediator concept overview

As one can see in Figure 1, the knowledge is lo-

cated in a database or data-warehouse, which is con-

nected to a ERP-System. Therefore, the mediator can

be integrated into current information systems. Doing

so, the areas of analytical, operative and communica-

tive PRM are covered, as well.

In the following sections the communication sys-

tem and the information system are covered.

3 COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

As mentioned in Section 2.1 the communication sys-

tem is realized as a Peer-to-Peer network. From the

technical point of view a Peer-to-Peer network avoids

a single point of failure. Therefore a Peer-to-Peer net-

work inclines a higher reliability and scalability than

centralized market places. If a centralized market

place falls out, no market transactions are possible.

If all market participants are distributed on different

machines in a network, they can turn out without in-

ﬂuencing other participants.

Moreover, there is an organizational reason to use

a Peer-to-Peer network as communication infrastruc-

ture. A centralized system must be hosted by an or-

ganizational unit. This organization has the absolute

monopoly to decide who could participate on the mar-

ket and for which price. This monopoly may be used

to charge higher fees from successful participants. In

a fully decentralized Peer-to-Peer network all partici-

pants are having equal rights.

Beside the technical and organizational advantages

of a Peer-to-Peer network, it must be possible for par-

ticipants to ﬁnd other participants who may be a pos-

sible partner. One basic system functionality is, that

participants must be able to offer their products to oth-

ers. In this mediator, each participant is able to offer

the products through a service type deﬁnition. A ser-

vice type is a description of a product, which can be

published to other market participants. The service

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428

type deﬁnes parameters and their values for the com-

munication between market participants. Due to the

requirement that this mediator cannot contain a cen-

tralized directory, the Peer-to-Peer network must en-

able this functionality.

Content-Addressable Networks (CANs) (Rat-

nasamy et al., 2001) address these issues and provide

a fully decentralized and scalable infrastructure to

distribute a directory. They are able to manage

huge sets of (key,value)-pairs and cope with very

high numbers of parallel transactions. CANs are

using multi-dimensional vector spaces in which data

objects can be stored.

9 8

A B

service type

service provider

max

max0

Figure 2: A two-dimensional CAN for discovering services

and service providers

Figure 2 depicts a two-dimensional CAN for dis-

covering services and service providers. Service

provider SP

offers services for service type A and

B. Service provider SP

offers only the service type

A. Due to the same service type, the place of these

services A in the directory of the CAN is on a vertical

line. If a search for service type A is started, the rout-

ing through the directory follows this line. All peers

which have an appropriate service type entry in their

directories send back the provider and its address to

the requesting peer.

In Section 2.1 we said, that another part of the com-

munication system is to deﬁne rules and a consistent

language for the participants. Figure 3 shows an UML

activity diagram for the ﬂow of messages between

two communication partners (R is the requesting peer,

P is the service provider).

The communication starts with a Request message

of Peer R. The service provider can accept this request

message or might decline the message with a Reset

message. In the case that the provider accepts the re-

questing peer, it responses with a Offer message. If

the offer satisﬁes the needs of R, it can send a Booking

message to buy the product. Is the offer is not satis-

fying the needs of the requesting peer, it could either

send a Cancel message to cease the communication

or another Request message, which contains a new,

and more detailed, request. If the booking message is

successful, the provider sends back an Ack message.

Offer

Request

Booking

Error

Cancel

Ack

[R is not

satisfied]

[R cancels

booking]

Reset

[P does not accept]

[P accepts]

[R is not interested]

[R accepts offer]

[booking ok]

[booking fails]

Figure 3: Message ﬂow in the communication system

When the booking fails the provider sends an Error

message.

This Section covered the network and the directory

of the mediator. We have shown, how market partici-

pants communicate with each other. The next section

describes, how agents are structured and which tasks

the agents must fulﬁll.

4 INFORMATION SYSTEM

In Section 2.1 we mentioned, that the information sys-

tem is implemented as an agent-based system. Agents

act on the behalf of a user (Maes, 1994; Wooldridge

and Jennings, 1994) and shall support users of the

mediator in decision-making. In the mediator, agents

play two roles: On the one hand, agents shall support

the user in the role as buyer of a product. In this case

they have to implement tasks in SRM. They must be

able to search offers, to rate these offers and to or-

der products. On the other hand, agents appear in the

role of a seller and therefore have to realize tasks from

the CRM. Here, they must be able to submit and to

conﬁrm an order. Moreover, they are able to analyze

other agents, so that the offers are suitable to the re-

questing agent.

Market and

User LogicLogging

Agent

Interface

User User

Logging

User Interface

Ergonomics

Experiences with

Business Partners, Reputation

Experiences with Users,

Personalization

Figure 4: Agent functionality

These requirements lead to the schematic structure

of an agent, which is shown in Figure 4. An agent logs

its experiences with other agents and the user. These

data are analyzed to evaluate the agent’s environment.

A MEDIATOR FOR E-BUSINESS

429

The logged data from other agents are used to assess

the trust in other agents. This can be accomplished

by reputation mechanisms (Chavez and Maes, 1996;

Padovan et al., 2001). The log data of the user can be

used to reﬁne the rating mechanisms for offers. This

leads to a personalized analysis of incoming offers on

client-side. All offers from different provider agents

were rated by the requesting agent and displayed as

sorted list. These mechanisms allow to evaluate the

offers with user speciﬁc data, which were not part of

the original request. Therefore sensitive data of the

requesting agent will not be published for provider

agents. Both logging variants inﬂuence the decisions

made in the market and user logic, which is part of the

Application Processor shown in Figure 1.

5 CONCLUSION

This paper revealed the concept of E-Business in the

ﬁeld of Partner Relation Management (PRM). The

PRM of a company includes the relationship manage-

ment to suppliers (SRM) and to customers (CRM).

The SRM and CRM activities of a company can be

seen as interfaces of a company to a market. To auto-

mate business processes in loosely coupled relations

between organizations a mediator is needed.

The presented mediator is split in an inner environ-

ment (the communication system) and an outer en-

vironment (the information system). The communi-

cation system ties together distributed business part-

ners and provides a decentralized service-oriented ar-

chitecture based on a CAN. The information system

is implemented as agent-based system. Each agent

represents one company on the market and is able to

perform business processes. The use of the media-

tor is domain independent, which means that different

products can be offered and requested.

The concept of this mediator was successfully im-

plemented in a case study in the tourist market.

Different services (e.g. hotel reservation, restaurant

searches and tourist information) were offered by dif-

ferent providers. Users are able to access the offered

information over different devices and to customize

their agent for their needs.

In future work we will investigate in the combina-

tion of different service types. The results of one ser-

vice type shall be the input of another service type.

For instance, a business trip by car includes an ho-

tel reservation and information of petrol stations. The

goal is, that the user only deﬁnes her/his destination

and the necessary actions (routing, petrol station plan-

ning and hotel reservation) were done automatically

by the user agent.

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