A number of projects mainly from FP6 are connected to the areas of SPIKE:
• Semantic Web and Semantic Issues ((Knowledge Web (507482), NeOn (027595), OntoWeb (IST-2000-29243))
• Security, Identity Management and Privacy (PRIME (507591), FIDIS (507512), GridTrust (033817)). These projects focus on Identity Management in open networks.
• Process-Oriented Knowledge Management (TEAM (035111))
• Semantic Web Service Infrastructures (INFRAWEBS (511723), DIP (507483), ASG (004617))
Of particular interest and closely related to SPIKE are:
• STASIS (034980, ongoing, started September 2006):
This project tries to enable small and medium enterprises to use eEconomy services by offering semantic services and applications based on an open registry and repository network. This helps to solve problems with different data formats by providing services to map from the format of one company to the format of another company. In contrast to SPIKE, this project does not offer any process and security support.
• TrustCom (001945, completed May 2007):
The major objective of TrustCom is to develop a coherent framework defining the architecture, mechanisms and core elements needed for ondemand creation of dynamically evolving scalable Virtual Organisations. Besides this, new software tools and software engineering methods will be developed to assist the effective development, implementation and operation of software and systems instantiating the abstract. In contrast to SPIKE, TrustCom does not cover the range of semantic and business process issues that arise when forming business alliances.
• SeCSE (511680, ongoing, started November 2004):
Focusing on four areas of engineering of software systems, namely specification, discovery, design and management of services, the projects targets to provide new techniques and tools for system integrators and service providers to support the cost-effective development and use of dependable services and service-centric applications: The main goals are research in requirements modelling from a service perspective, quality of service and dependability specifications as well as providing support for using these specifications within service discovery and binding mechanisms. SeCSE is a service-centric project and does not include any workflow and process techniques.
• OPUCE (034101, ongoing, started September 2006):
OPUCE tries to bridge advances in networking, communication and information technology services towards a unique service environment. In this open environment developers and end users are able to create applications and ad-hoc services in an easy way for both. To reach this goal the project targets to deliver a global software infrastructure of business enabled collaborative and dynamic loosely coupled services. However, OPUCE does not target portal interface and security issues.
• SUPER (026850, ongoing, started April 2006):
A three layer architecture for semantic BPM shall emerge from this project. The Semantic Service Bus layer is a foundational layer dealing with brokering service requests. The Semantic Process Engine layer instantiates and executes business process models and handles the related service requests from the service bus. The Semantic Process Modelling layer stores models of business processes plus all additionally relevant spheres of the enterprise. It seems to provide very useful results, but is not focused on business alliances and provides no semantic transformation of service messages.
The projects described above treat special aspects which SPIKE will extend and integrate into a comprehensive, ready-to-use solution for building business alliances and collaborations.
