An Electronic Market-place Centralising Exchanges in the Virtual Enterprise: a Model Proposition

In this paper, we show that Service Oriented Architectures enable exchanges to be more flexible inside the virtual enterprise (VE), because they create an electronic market-place between the actors composing the VE. However, mechanisms have to be settled to regulate exchanges inside the VE, as well as to protect the VE from external threats and aggressions. Those mechanisms can be materialized by Service Level Agreements (SLA) aiming to define criterion evaluating the quality of exchanges (products and services) inside the VE. This SLA definition is very important, because it will guarantee the good transaction operations between actors. In very specific and wellknown fields, an automatic SLA creation can be considered, which would enable to perform transactions between actors in an automated way. At last, we propose a simple solution based on the auction principle to match offer and demand in the market-place.