Peer-to-Peer Collaborative Internet Business Servers

As the Web evolves from providing information access into a platform for e-business, there is a need for technologies to support dynamic inter-enterprise collaboration. Toward this goal, we have developed Internet Business Servers (IBSs). This approach essentially turns individual Web servers into communicating and collaborating servers, with extended functionality for inter-enterprise business collaboration. An IBS embeds a Web server, and, therefore, is accessible via any Web browser anywhere. IBSs support Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computation at multiple tiers. At the communication tier, IBSs can communicate using heterogeneous messaging protocols and transport mechanisms. At the business process tier, IBSs collaborate by means of built-in Conversational Process Managers (CPM) that provide decentralized, P2P process management. At the business tier, IBSs support a document based ecommerce model. IBS represents the merging of multiple disciplines such as Web technology, agent technology and workflow technology. However, it extends agent technology by elevating agent cooperation from the conversation level to the process management level; extends workflow technology from centralized process management to decentralized conversational process management; and extends Web technology by turning individual Web servers into communicating and collaborating servers. Further, integrating the advanced P2P collaboration capabilities we have developed with existing P2P networking and resource sharing technologies into a single autonomous system platform represents a step towards a general and dynamic P2P-ware infrastructure. The feasibility and practical value of this work have been demonstrated through prototypes implemented at HP Labs.