e-Business process interleaving: Managerial and technological implications*

The emergence of Internet as the hub of e-business has made business process integration another important frontier of information management and technology. As a result, the management of inter-organizational business processes is now a major concern of corporate managers. We envision that the new and complex ways of interactions among business partners in a supply web will need to be managed effectively as the next generation of the Internet makes cross company workflow a reality. Consequently, business managers are confronted with new issues and new decisions in the strategic and operational aspects of process integration. To facilitate the understanding of these issues, we introduce a new paradigm of business computing referred to as E-business Process Interleaving, which emphasizes the complex and dynamic integration of e-business processes across company boundaries. In this paper, we outline various impacts of this new phenomenon on information management and technology and investigate the enabling technologies of e-business process interleaving. We believe that our work can help the development of the next generation of corporate information infrastructure that enables greater degree of e-business process integration.This research was partly supported by CITM grants including the DoD contract (2000–2001), N00244-00-C0108, and by the State of California NGI Program.