Web Services Middleware Application: A Solution for SMEs towards B2B Framework Implementation

The electronic commerce for Small and Medium Enterprises on the part of Business-to-Business trade is experiencing difficulties due to the nature of the processes involved. SMEs fail to penetrate the B2B market due to lack of understanding, lack of finances and lack of IT experts that can create customized applications for standardized B2B ecommerce, such as ebXML. COTS software costs a lot, and this paper proposes a solution based on the ebXML framework and Web Services as a middleware that will do most of the job for these companies. Key-Words: e-commerce, b2b, SMEs, middleware, web services, ebXML, frameworks