A Mediator for E-Business

Partner Relationship Management Systems are implemented in many companies to improve the relations to important partners along the value-chain. The goal is to differentiate themselves from competitors and their products. 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).