Project Summary
SPIKE stands for Secure Process-oriented Integrative Service Infrastructure for Networked Enterprises.
The purpose of the SPIKE project is to develop a software service platform for the easy and fast start-up of virtual business alliances.
This platform will:
- Enable outsourcing of parts of the value chain to business partners
- Simplify collaboration between the members of participating organisations through dynamically created and pre-defined business processes and workflows
- Achieve interoperability and integration between organisations of all sizes
- Offer generic solutions for inter-enterprise interoperability and collaboration through reference scenarios and guidelines for their use
- Have a special focus on security and trust
Aim
The aim of SPIKE is to research and implement a system that will bring flexibility to the collaboration between networked enterprises. Using SPIKE, enterprises can gain business opportunities with previously inaccessible customers and partnering organisations.
Components
To fully reach the desired goals, the platform developed will be easy to use, manage and integrate into the existing environment. The solution will encompass a semantically enriched service-oriented infrastructure including a virtual semantic service bus for workflow control, handling and transformation of messages. At the enterprise interface level, SPIKE will follow a collaborative process portal approach, capturing the user’s working context and seamlessly transmitting it to other applications and services according to the current workflow. This will also enable integration of legacy systems via tailored portals and connectors.
Special focus: security
Special focus will be put on security issues. The solution will include an easy-to-administer security infrastructure for the networked enterprise, which will provide security services for service and workflow management.
Open source software
The potential of SPIKE will be shown in pilot deployments and use cases: a collaborative business alliance and two ready-for-use services in the networked enterprise.
The software project results will be free of charge. Furthermore they will be published under an open source license.
Because of its focus, the project will have an impact on organisations of all sizes that wish to collaborate with each other. To the extent possible, SPIKE will build upon existing open source software to make it a cost feasible option for small and middle-sized enterprises (SME) as well.
New business opportunities for SMEs
The base system and the infrastructure of the solution will be made available as open source software, which ensures low initial adoption cost. The deployment of open standards will reduce the lifecycle costs and provide a better return on investment (ROI) in the long run. This will open up business opportunities, especially for SMEs. SPIKE is a collaborative project funded by the EC. The project is scheduled to end by the year 2010.
