03.07. Detalle

The Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) is an Internet-based software environment in which business applications can be developed and used. The unique feature of the DBE is that applications within the ecosystem are able to perform new functions that were, up to now, undreamed of by users.

What is the DBE?

The Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) is an Internet-based software environment in which business applications can be developed and used. The unique feature of the DBE is that applications within the ecosystem are able to perform new functions that were, up to now, undreamed of by users.

The DBE is an open, free environment where even the smallest specialist software developer can participate competitively in the massive global marketplace for business applications. It will enable end users to easily access and use those applications as services, and to have the benefits of intelligence, interaction and adaptation as the software evolves in response to their own usage and that of others. The initial target of the DBE is those complex commercial transactions and processes that are not easily or economically served by current even state-of-the-art software technologies.

Who is behind it?

The Digital Business Ecosystem is being created by the DBE Project, which is a 3-year, €14m pan-European project, involving 120 researchers and specialists from 20 organisations, including some of the big names in computing and business. The project is supported by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme for research and development in Information Society Technologies. A growing number of regional economic development actors are becoming associated partners in the project as a way to introduce their software developers and end users to the technology. They are linking the project into their regional needs and have provided the project with pilot applications among businesses in their regions.

The DBE project currently

The DBE project is currently developing the ‘evolutionary’ technology that is the key to the DBE. This involves harnessing the principles of self-organisation and self-optimisation from the various fields of science and nature and applying them to interactions between businesses. These interactions form value chains that can be thought of as the ‘organisms’ that inhabit the ecosystem and that will change and evolve over time. The project integrates expertise from the worlds of science, computing, business, and economic development. Work is simultaneously underway to develop the fundamental principles: of applying science to software evolution and modelling business processes so that such models can become the building blocks of software services, and understanding the needs and competitive environment of SMEs in order to provide services that add value and increase profitability.

The project structure creates a pathway that connects top researchers to SMEs in EU regions in order to turn scientific principles into useful tools for everyday business. Regional involvement in the project ensures that the end objective is to benefit SMEs across Europe.

How does it work?

The DBE’s core capability comes from a combination of two approaches in an area where science meets computing.

First, by digitally emulating some of the many processes that occur in nature and that are observed to create self-organisation and self-optimisation, it is possible to produce an entirely new behaviour in software that can optimize a process or that can self-evolve while in use. Often, this capability is not just within one application but involves a complex interaction between applications and between users.

Second, when business processes are represented as a model-driven software architecture, independent applications can interact without having to be ‘compatible’ and without even knowing anything about each other’s internal construction. As well as providing easy access to the applications, the Internet acts as the platform for applications to work together. It enables them to perform complex interactions, whether they are centrally provided application services or peer-to-peer applications.

The ultimate aim is to create an ecosystem where applications within it behave like intelligent, interactive, and adaptive organisms – something not possible with today’s ‘hard - programmed’ and proprietary software that is effectively locked inside millions of personal computers.

The DBE and the future

As part of the next generation of information and communication technology, the DBE will enable users, mostly business users, to achieve things that simply are not possible today due to the limits of current technology. In essence, businesses will be able to interact with each other in more effective and efficient ways. The ecosystem will contain services that are supported by application software specially written to take advantage of the ecosystem. Because of the functionality of the ecosystem, these services will evolve over time, constantly improving their effectiveness for the user.

The shape of this next generation is still emerging, but some aspects of what it will involve are already clear:

The use of the Internet as an environment, via which services can be delivered and commercial transactions made. The use of open source principles so that, like the Internet itself, no organisation can ever dominate the ecosystem and all contributors will have an equal chance to compete. Finally - and this is the most exciting and innovative step – the use of software applications and services that are able to ‘evolve’ and to organise themselves in a way that is optimised for the end user.

As a European initiative, the DBE will put European Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and European ICT companies at the forefront of this next generation of evolving software, and so help European SMEs to compete at world-class level no matter how small, remote, or obscure their business.

Regional Dimension of DBE

The DBE project is a tool for regional economic development based on a model that tightly integrates regional policies with local DBE actors called ‘Regional Catalysts’. These catalysts are local facilitators for the ecosystem and it is these facilitators who draw in SMEs.

In the DBE approach, a Regional Catalyst is a regional main-cluster organisation with thorough knowledge of SMEs and their local environment. They also have the skills and expertise necessary to involve SMEs in the integration of business and technical processes. Their role is to enable SMEs to compete and/or collaborate in global markets via the DBE.

While clustering enables companies to focus on what they know and do best, aggregation stimulates higher rates of business formation and lowers thresholds for new SMEs.

Another key factor is access to innovation, knowledge and know-how. In the knowledge based economy, companies are expected to look for their main competitive advantages. This generally requires geographic proximity to professional colleagues, leading-edge suppliers, highly skilled professionals, research and development facilities and industry leaders.

The DBE aims to expand and implement the concept of ‘virtual proximity’. The Digital Business Ecosystem is an evolving network and the number of communities it involves will grow by supporting the Digital Ecosystem model upon which the project is developed. I n this area, we will profile new regions and communities joining or endorsing the project effort.

To date the following regions are already actively involved in the DBE project.

• Region Tampere (Finland)
• Central England Region (UK)
• Región Aragón (Spain)

TB·Solutions is participating in the DBE project via the Regional Catalyst Aragón (Spain). It as a software company, considering its expertise in eGovernment and eBanking developments focused on security issues (electronic signature, ciphering, PKI, document transmission), will support in integrating modules for signature purposes in the DBE platform.

A common infrastructure for all those applications where we want to integrate digital signature functionalities is the final objective of our participation. This will allow:

• To avoid additional costs in digital signature functionality development, both in existing and future applications.
• To make applications independent of new technologies and protocols.
• To make applications independent of the differences among the different authorised CAs, as well as among the different digital certificates issued by these.

The modules are currently based on open standards:

• Platform:
  • Application servers that implement J2EE (JDK 1.3.1): Websphere, Weblogic, OrionServer, Tomcat
  • Operating systems that implement J2SE (JVM 1.3.1): *Nix, Windows
• Interoperability: HTTPS, SOAP, Database (Oracle, SQL Server)

Proposed modules to be integrated in the DBE platform are:

• SignatureServer whose objectives are:
  • To provide a standardised service interface in order to verify the digitally signed documents (integrity)
  • To simplify the advanced digital signature process implementation in the organisation’s daily processes.
  • To standardise the interface: the received messages adjust to cryptographic message standards: PKCS #7, XMLDSig, CMS....
  • Integration via:
    • Web Service (SOAP)
    • Locally invokeable service within the JVM itself.
  • To create a repository in order to store the signatures to avoid repudiation (in conjunction with the other ASF modules, not included)
  • To concentrate in a unique point the functionality of signed documents emitted by the organization
  • Access to non-repudiation database
  • Signed document generation.
• Policy Manager whose objectives are:
  • To provide the platform with a unique point where the trust policies for the different certification authorities must be defined
  • Possibility of changing the certificate use policies without the need to reprogramme all the applications.
  • To provide a unique administration point.
  • To decrease infrastructure maintenance and administration costs in large organisation infrastructures.
  • To encapsulate the differences between different CA’s.
  • Simple administration based on Web. Definition of:
    • Certificate usage applications.
    • Trust certification authorities.
• X.509 Validator whose objectives are:
  • To provide with an independent certificate validation agency
  • To support many certification entities.
  • To support many certificate verification methods: OCSP, LDAP, HTTP…
  • Integration by means of OCSP protocol.
  • On-line certificate validation.
  • Certificate validation cache.

Documentación

DBE 880 Kb

Contacto

Javier Val
Instituto Tecnológico Aragónés
María de Luna, 7 - 50018 – Zaragoza (Spain)
Tfno.: +34 976716250
Fax: +34 976716 539
E-mail: jval@ita.es
Web: http://www.ita.es/ita/