On Architectural Design of TrustMan System Applying HICI Analysis Results - The case of technological perspective in VBEs

Organizations need to trust each other for smoothing their collaboration to both acquire and respond to more and better business opportunities that none of them could do otherwise. However, in Virtual organization Breeding Environments (VBEs) there are several difficulties related to the processes that must be performed to facilitate organizations create trust to each other. The main cause of these difficulties is the way these processes are currently performed which in most cases are ad hoc and manual. Among others the processes include: assessing trust level of organizations, creating trust among organizations, establishing trust relationships, and managing trust related data. As a result, configuring virtual organizations (VOs) within the VBE environment is becoming challenging and difficult. To match the pace in the market these processes must be quickly performed and must produce very accurate results. Thus they must now be supported with semiautomatic systems. In order to properly assess trust level of organizations in VBEs, trust elements and trust relationships must be thoroughly characterized. This paper addresses the characterization of trust elements and automation of processes related to the management of trust among organizations. It presents a three-stage approach for identifying and analyzing trust elements. The identified trust elements and their related analysis results are then applied in the design of mechanisms and architectures for Trust Management (TrustMan) system. The design of two architectures (operational and componential) for TrustMan system is also presented in this paper.