The Grid as a Virtual Enterprise Enabler

Modern information systems are extending the traditional boundaries of organizations incorporating external recourses in the form of data and services. The need to support increasing client demands has led to dynamic and more complex business processes. Complex workflows in networked organizations are much more difficult to manage since traditional approaches are not suited for distributed environments. Service-Oriented approaches in the form of Web or Grid services bear the potential of increased performance and flexibility. In this work, we discuss the use of a relatively new computing paradigm that leverages distributed service-oriented business models: the Grid. We discuss how the Grid can facilitate efficient intra-business processes in highly dynamic virtual enterprises and present a high level architecture for managing complexity of business functions using Grid services.