An investigative approach on improving B2B interactions and communication capabilities for enterprise integration using web 2.0 technologies

Enterprise integration (EI) is critical to the success of a supply chain by enabling the exchange, sharing and retrieval of information across enterprises. To adapt to changes quickly especially in the trend towards adaptive supply chains, efficient and effective B2B interactions and communication capabilities are important for companies, where short and dynamic connections for seamless information flow across different value chains is needed for dynamic business partnership formation. Current web technologies, or Web 1.0 technologies, have shown limitations such as dull Internet client interfaces, slow responsiveness in information retrieval, and system centric information publish and consumption. The emergence of "Web 2.0 technologies" offers both a paradigm shift and introducing innovative capabilities. This paper presents our approach for a systematic study on how Web 2.0 technologies can improve the B2B interactions and communication capabilities for EI in supply chain. Research work focuses on: Rich client applications using Ajax, information push-model using RSS and service-centric software models in SaaS. Review and analysis are given in the paper followed by a proof-of-concept prototype on SaaS.