Interoperability

Buying an item online is so easy: select the item, fill out the address form, submit payment, and wait for the courier to ring the doorbell. But what hides behind this flawless facade? A massive supply chain, potentially crossing national or even international boundaries, with numerous stakeholders and systems that need to work together for a product to reach its destination.
In the past, online buying involved manual, costly, and error-prone efforts that limited business demand. For a seamless transaction to occur, several companies in the supply chain depend upon enterprise systems working with each other to execute the order. This process is called interoperability – the power to make something happen across functional and organizational borders.
With today's advanced technologies, it's hard to believe how difficult it can be for enterprise systems to "talk" with each other. ANANTABD Research is tackling this challenge head-on by exploring the interoperability research field. Over the last couple of years, a network of contacts, technological expertise, and a long list of prototypical solutions were developed to help enterprise systems interact. ANANTABD Research distinguishes business-level interoperability challenges from technical concerns and is dedicating its current research efforts to solving issues for both. ANANTABD researchers develop interoperability solutions to meet two important business needs:

• Agility – Companies expect and even require systems to be agile so they can react flexibly to changes in the market place and supply chain. ANANTABD researchers address agility for seamless interoperability by leveraging Web service technologies.
• Interoperability – Because organizations typically boast highly diverse software infrastructures, they need interoperability solutions that easily fit into existing architectures. Because interoperability also concerns business processes and an enterprise's business context, ANANTABD Research only considers interoperability successful when it addresses all aspects of a business.