eMarketplaces for enterprise and cross enterprise integration

Businesses today must collaborate more frequently with partners to build virtual organizations and supply-chains that reduce times-to-market and costs. This paper argues that an electronic marketplace (eMarketplace) is a promising model for eBusiness applications. The architecture for this integrated environment is business-centric and knowledge-oriented. In this architecture, the eMarketplace exists as a collection of economically motivated software agents of cooperative distributed systems. It enables and supports common integration and economic services between market participants. This paper focuses on developing an agent-oriented dynamic trading mechanism (Vickrey auction) and supply-chain integration for the eMarketplace. A prototype is developed for a Vickrey eMarketplace using a coordinated, intelligent rational Agent model and a FIPA-compliant platform.