A Cloud–Based Approach for Collaborative Networks Supporting Serviced-Enhanced Products

Abstract : Collaboration through sharing competencies and resources has been a key approach to both creating new competitive environments, as well as achieving the needed agility to rapidly answer to market demands. Establishing proper collaborative networks for service-enhanced products is challenging considering the wide diversity of business operations and involved resources. The creation of software solutions to support such collaboration is an effort-intensive task, especially when these solutions are designed to run in the cloud and when they are required to be highly customisable to different end-user scenarios. In this paper we describe how a cloud-based platform can support the creation of software solutions for the collaborative development and operation of highly customised and service-enhanced products. The platform has been designed based on numerous key requirements that have been generated from the analysis of different business scenarios from various use cases/domains, as well as general key requirements a cloud based platform should provide to support collaboration among organisations.