Self Adaptation in a Peers Network: The COIN Project, Techniques for Guaranteeing the Quality of Service of a Self-managed Ecosystem

The main goal of the COIN (Enterprise Collaboration and Interoperability) European Project is to provide an Evolutionary and Pervasive Service Platform, realizing a collaborative Digital Ecosystem that allows providers of business services to publish their offers, and potential customers to easily locate and access the services that best suit their needs. Given the absence of a central management unit in the peers network envisaged by the COIN project consortium, many ideas have emerged on how the network could react to internal and external events in order to spontaneously fit the needs and objectives of service providers and of their potential users. This paper collects some of these ideas and proposals, suggesting further enhancements to improve the usability and effectiveness of the system.