In Klöckner, K. (ed.): Proceedings of the 9th EUROMICRO workshop on Parallel and Distributed Processing (PDP'01). Mantova, Italy, February 7-9, 2001, pp. 317-326. IEEE Computer Society publications, Los Alamitos, 2001. CRAFT: A Framework for Integration Facilitation in Cross-Organisational Distributed Systems 1 1 The work presented in this paper project was funded as ESPRIT project CrossFlow no. 28635 by the Commission of the European Union and the Swiss Federal Government. Heiko Ludwig and Yigal Hoffner IBM Research, Zurich Research Laboratory, 8803 Rüschlikon, Switzerland {hlu,yho}@zurich.ibm.com Abstract The increasing proliferation of complex electronic services, particularly in the business-to-business area, entails the creation and management of complex, cross- organisational distributed systems. An important chal- lenge with such systems concerns the integration of dif- ferent core and administrative services into a consistent whole. Furthermore, there is a need for extra func- tionality to facilitate the provision and consumption of the resulting service inside as well as outside the organi- sation. This functionality may have to deal with a host of issues such as: facilitating co-operation while maintai- ning autonomy, remuneration, monitoring, auditing and management of the integrated service, and the translation between internal and external models, processes and in- formation. All the above are aimed at ensuring that the contractual obligations of the business relationship are met. We need a component that supports the integration of the core and administrative services while providing added functionality concerned with crossing the organi- sational boundary. This component is termed an "integration facilitator". The CrossFlow project dealt with the dynamic estab- lishment of cross-organisational business relationships. CRAFT (CrossFlow Runtime Framework Technology) provides a framework to build integration facilitators. By using this framework, the core and administrative services of an organisation can be quickly integrated and extended to create different business level services to suit the changing needs of organisations and their dynamic business partnerships. 1. Introduction In the area of electronic business, an increasing number of high-level and complex services are being offered and used. High-level services have business semantics, e.g. payment processing, accounting or logistics services. Complex services are not atomic entities from the consumer’s point of view; their state can be monitored and controlled, i.e. the service consumer can influence the service at execution time. Companies wishing to compete in a dynamic business environment as service providers or consumers, are forced to look for fast and flexible solutions when offering or consuming new or modified services. The dynamic establishment of outsourcing relationships is concerned with using services outside the organisational boundary, thereby creating cross-organisational distributed systems. Interoperability of service providing and consuming systems (core systems) is not sufficient, but it is a necessary step to addressing additional issues: An outsourcing infrastructure has to support integration while maintaining the autonomy and integrity of an organisation. Access to organisations’ services has to be restricted, abstract external views of a service’s state, the ability to measure quality of service (QoS), and to admi- nister the business aspects of the relationship, e.g. ac- counting and payment, have to be provided. All of the above aspects are defined in a contract that governs the outsourcing relationship. As there are different service types, related QoS parameters, and administration aspects of a business relationship, we need to deploy specific functionality for each particular kind of business relationship. Some of the above-mentioned functionality is already available in organisations’ administrative systems such as accounting. Other functionality has to be specially provided. All these systems have to be assembled and integrated into a coherent whole in a dynamic fashion to cater for the contract. We need a component that enables the integration of the core and administrative systems while providing the added functionality concerned with crossing the organisational boundary. We call this an