Virtual enterprise network general architecture

In order to achieve a market objective that otherwise could be out of reach, enterprises, which do not have the complete knowledge for developing all the components needed for their products, need to outsource the development of specific parts; in this way a cooperation with other enterprises working in the same industrial sector starts. It is then possible to say that enterprises give rise to a special type of virtual enterprise (VE), in which each company maintains the greatest flexibility and business independence. The concepts of a VE enabled by a new generation of internet/intranet/extranet-based services are discussed in this article. This work analyzes the network architecture for a large enterprise, geographically dispersed (seen as VE) as support for virtual project development.