Marco Casassa Mont

This R&D project is about researching and developing a new type of service provision “framework” which we call the Internet Business Community – IBC (aka Electronic, or Virtual, Business Community – IBC, or VBC).  It provides a trusted environment in which small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can conduct business in collaboration with other companies – a kind of Interaction Centre for business “communities”. 

In contrast to many other types of community currently operating on the Internet – e.g. chat groups, special interest forums, local community services - IBCs are strictly managed groups with agreed standards of conduct, roles, responsibilities and service levels.  The Business Community Provider deals with issues such as: membership, authentication, access control policy, and auditing. It may also provide business services, like: billing, payment, secure-storage, directory, secure e-mail, and workflow.

The interaction may simply be information sharing between business partners, or it may be the support for conducting and tracking shared processes.  There could also be communication services that the community members wish to share – teleconference support, virtual meeting rooms, on-line training, etc.

Various demonstrators have been built and Intellectual Properties generated. A spin-off of this project was the ACSIS project.