BUILDING BLOCKS FOR A VIRTUAL DISTRIBUTED ENTERPRISE George Asimakopoulos Computer Engineering and Informatics Department, University of Patras, Greece & Technological Educational Institute of Mesolongi, Nafpaktos Greece Nafpaktos Antirrio National Road, 30300, Greece George Polizos and Vassilis Triantafillou Technological Educational Institute of Mesolongi, Nafpaktos Greece Nafpaktos Antirrio National Road, 30300, Greece ABSTRACT Many knowledge intensive enterprises face the need to adopt a distributed organization model in order to achieve a multi point presence so that they can exploit both local markets and to utilize highly skilled personnel that is sighted in universities and research centers. This paper presents an information system architecture that can enable and support a distributed virtual business model based on management and organizational best practices. KEYWORDS Enterprise organization, business software, virtual enterprise, collaborative software environments, knowledge management, distributed enterprise. 1. INTRODUCTION Knowledge intensive enterprises, such as IT sector companies, rely heavily on the degree of collaboration that is built up among co-workers. There has been a lot of research developed on such issues over the past few years. In order to achieve a high level of collaboration, information systems along with company mentality are being put under consideration. Such organizations are often forced by business and technological factors to adopt a distributed organization model. Due to a number of reasons that mainly are related to local markets and proximity to research centers and technology originators. Thus, such companies often end up having multiple premises operating that are sighted in different geographical locations that can extend over different countries. A company with such an organizational scheme in order to be competitive via utilizing every available knowledge asset regardless of this asset’s location and the location that knowledge is required must utilize a framework infrastructure. Even more, due to the intense competition such companies are stressed by, mergers and acquisitions are a very common situation, making seamless distributed operation a bounden need. This paper presents an architecture that has been during the development of METHODIKA, a toolbox that aims at providing both a software infrastructure and a methodology that enables distributed enterprises to operate seamlessly regardless of premise location. METHODIKA is being co-developed in a real life distributed environment, along with two medium sized IT companies that are heavily distributed, in various locations and which have acquired recently other companies, thus issues that require further research have already emerged. In the heart of the METHODIKA project lays the concept that in order to truly enable distributed operation, a holistic approach is required, along with analyzing business sector specific attributes. This is why METHODIKA focuses on business operations, processes and transformation methodologies as much as on software tools and platforms. IADIS International Conference e-Society 2007 357