Interoperability, the INTEROP project and standardisation

The lack of interoperability between ICT systems is becoming a real bottleneck in the collaboration and co-operation of enterprises. Organisations involved in such endeavours have to exchange business information and have to have the same understanding of the meaning of the exchanged information and to trust both the communication itself and the validity of its contents. This paper reports on the European INTEROP Network of Excellence concerned with interoperability research for networked enterprises applications and software, its goals, rationale and first results. The different activities of the INTEROP network to solve problems of research fragmentation in this domain are identified. The current status in relevant standardisation is presented as well.