Secure Web service-based resource sharing in ERP Networks

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems integrate operational application systems of different enterprise sectors. Logistics, human resource management and business accountancy are the most important components, the business Junctions of ERP systems can be assigned to. Besides the advantages of an integrated solution a number of disadvantages arise from the complexity of such systems. Particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are affected by typical disadvantages like high operating- and maintenance costs which means that they cannot afford to buy and maintain an enterprise-wide integrated ERP system. A feasible opportunity to counter these problems is to develop a distributed (federated) system architecture based on loosely coupled components and their functions in order to partly reduce the complexity of the super-ordinate system. The presented paper describes the distribution of ERP systems on the basis of Web Services and gives a first proposal of a prototype. ERP system functions are distributed within a peer-to-peer architecture and are managed by different network nodes (providers). The major risks of this approach are connected to security problems which appear when confidential enterprise data is handled. A continuously automated function (service) integration from service discovery until service response processing increases the already existing risks. An important issue in this context is the consideration of trust relationships between service consumers and service providers. In our proposed solution security configurations based on XML policies are used to meet the security requirements of both communication partners in an open network.