Agent-enabled architecture

for infomediary based e-marketplaces

Phd Joanna Oleśków1, Prof. Marek Fertsch2 and Phd Paulina Golińska3
1
Poznan University of Technology,
Strzelecka 11 St., Poznan, Poland.
Tel: +48 61 6653374;
Email: asia@world.pl
2
marek.fertsch@put.poznan.pl
3
paulina.golinska@doctorate.put.poznan.pl

ABSTRACT

This article presents an agent-enabled architecture for infomediary based e-marketplaces that exhibit
information transparency and enable enhanced integration among participants in the e-chain. Buyer
agents and supplier agents represent buyers and suppliers in the agent-enabled
e-marketplace. Infomediary functions to enable information flows are realized by various agent types:
discovery agents, transaction agents and authenticated monitoring agents. Going further we can also
distinguish other agents within each type, dealing with specific functions (distribution, purchase,
manufacturing, logistics, environmental protection etc.) Intelligent agents have enormous potential;
they may be used to negotiate their way through entire supply chain without need for human
intervention. We first briefly describe each o these agent systems, then we discuss how to integrate them
and address associated socio-technical problems, and finally we indicate benefits of such hybrid
systems.

1. PRELIMINARY
The past decade has seen significant advances in Web-based technologies for integration of heterogeneous
systems across organizations required to serve a variety of inter-organizational process needs, including
collaborative product design, multi-party business transactions, and outsourced business functions.
E-commerce offers new channels and business models for buyers and sellers to effectively and efficiently trade
goods and services over the Internet. In particular e-marketplaces that are centralized trading hubs
for conducting on-line trade between several sellers and buyers provide improved efficiencies and benefits
especially in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. E-marketplaces can operate according to different
business models including catalog-based e-sales and e-procurement, auctions and reverse auctions, and
exchanges addressing the trading needs and business requirements of different vertical and horizontal markets.
The growing volume and complexity of information in modern business processes require an alliance of human
analysis and judgment aided by intelligent systems. Intelligence in processing transparent information flows
in e-marketplaces can help increase the efficacy for its participants and reduce users’ cognitive load. Intelligent
systems can support a range of e-marketplace processes and provide aggregate or product-specific cumulative
demand or supply conditions in a single e-marketplace, and across multiple upstream or downstream
e-marketplaces in the e-chain. Currently, e-chains suffer from paucity in information transparency extending
to all participant e-marketplaces in the existing e-chain. Agent-enabled architecture for infomediary-based
e-marketplaces that exhibit information transparency and enable enhanced interaction among participants in the
e-chain [1] Agents introduce intelligence to the discovery of business partners and facilitate transactions by
incorporating experiential knowledge of past transactions and the effects of volatile demand and supply
conditions across multiple e-marketplaces in the e-chain.
The role of infomediares is well recognized in the facilitation of information sharing, exchange and aggregation
of electronic marketplaces. Infomediares play a critical role in e-marketplaces by managing information flows to
support business processes required of the e-marketplace.
2. E–MARKETPLACES

2.1. Definition of e-marketplaces

The opinions about the definition of e-marketplaces diverge. They range from emphasizing only the Internet-
based character of e-marketplaces [2] up to describing more the functionality to show the value-added features
of e-marketplaces [3]. Thus, the definition heavily depends on the role a person or company plays
in e-commerce: buyer, supplier, seller, or distributor. However, all definitions share the statement in common
that e-marketplaces are Web-based applications, which offer abilities for e-commerce online trade between
several buying and selling companies. E-marketplaces play a big role in e-business.
E-marketplaces offer different business models such as multi-vendor catalogs for e-sales
or e-procurement as well as several types of auctions or exchange systems for enabling companies’ dynamic
trading opportunities. In addition, e-marketplaces can provide even more value-added functions such
as payment, transaction completion, and fulfillment services as well as content management or integration
capabilities for existing legacy systems of the companies.
As indicated above, e-marketplaces are more than simple e-commerce sites for selling
or buying products or services. E-marketplaces provide functionality along the supply chain, which offer
multiple services for each stage. Figure 1 maps e-marketplace functionality and services to supply chain stages.

Figure 1.E-marketplaces enable services along the supply chain [4]

The transaction functionality comprises the core mechanisms of e-marketplaces. It enables companies to meet,
to exchange information, and to trade products and services. Foregrounding, this functionality contains services
for matching suppliers and buyers and mostly provides a catalog and order management.
The matching describes the opportunity to group marketplace participants according to industry types and offers
search and browse mechanisms to them for finding trading partners on the e-marketplaces. The catalog and
order management cover functionality to maintain multi-vendor catalogs in a hierarchical structure and manage
incoming orders. Orders will be persistently stored, split regarding to different involved suppliers, and
automatically distributed to these suppliers. For both, buy and sell side, the order status can be tracked for
informing about their current transactions.[4]
The fulfillment functionality offers support for the value chain stages completion and long-term supplier
relations. The supported services ease the transaction processing by offering add-ons for initiation, fulfillment
and completion of trading transactions.
E-marketplaces offer also tools for checking credit-worthiness of potential contract partners for an initiation
phase of a transaction. In addition, e-marketplaces can provide techniques for checking product quality, the
ability for integrating with companies’ ERP systems for the fulfillment phase for supporting automated
transaction workflow, payment service for automating and simplifying currency transfer and clearing services,
as well as additional features such as insurance services for insuring order items.
The integration functionality supports the same supply chain stages like the fulfillment functionality, because
a main task for the integration functionality is to enable e-marketplace solutions for offering advanced
fulfillment services. Providing a large variety of interfaces for integration with nearly any external software
solution would give marketplaces the opportunity for flexible adaptation and extension of themselves regarding
to the market needs. Therefore, such kind of e-marketplaces can offer their participants many useful fulfillment
and other services.
Additional services are supported for all stages along the supply chain. They should support e-marketplace
participants by using the new media and as second they should enable users to observe their business activities
within e-markets. Market reports are the most important feature. The participants should be given the capability
to create transaction-based market reports of their business activities for analyzing sales and turnovers as well as
product or order-related information. E-marketplaces should provide tools for creating and outputting graphical
reports on business metrics even via multiple data formats to give the users a wide range of information
opportunities. Another possible way for giving support is to offer a customer hotline or user support for fast and
uncomplicated help or by supporting a messaging system for simplifying contacting with other marketplace
participants or for exchanging information with them.
A further important service is to offer multiple currencies and languages if the e-marketplaces are focused
on global trade. Additional services can also stand for application server providing (ASP) or sale-site hosting for
an easing market entry of potential participants. Renting these resources is much cheaper for the businesses than
buying, if they want to test e-marketplace capabilities for their company.
As we see above an Electronic Market (E-Market) is a virtual marketplace where buying and selling is done
over a communication network [5].

2.2. Overall e-marketplace architecture

E-marketplaces are built as Internet-based Client/Server software systems offering access for a large number
of users maybe spread over the whole world.
To develop a successful engineering foundation of an e-Marketplace, we need fully realized solution that
accommodates the needs of the e-Business participants and allows them to extend advanced services to the
trading community. E-marketplaces must expand to support a broader base of services ranging from baseline
interaction and directory services to speciality services such as online payment, logistics and dynamic trade. The
structure of e-marketplace constitutes a formal codification of trading process rules. To provide smooth and
effective integration at the business level, an e-marketplace model should accommodate and support interfaces
to the existing business models and the participant entities for procurement processes, customer-supplier
interactions, business rules, workflow and relationships. It is also important that the architecture
of e-Marketplace supports the incorporation and leveraging the participants’ legacy environments with minimal
overhead. This architecture should be scalable in the sense it is capable of supporting a large number of users
in a highly open environment [6]
E-marketplaces are implemented, like most of all e-commerce solutions, using a three-tired architecture
consisting of a client tier, a middle tier and a back-end tier (Figure 2)
E-marketplace architectures are designed for supporting a wide number of requirements such as availability,
reliability, security, and load balancing. Three-tier architecture separates presentation logic, business logic, and
the database layer and forms the foundation for developing large scalable applications with good maintainability
and extensibility.
Finally, an e-marketplace should be developed using standard techniques on the one side, such as HTTP, XML,
and CORBA for the communication across different subsystems and on the other side for system architecture
to ensure a platform-independent, language-independent, and application-independent solution, for example
using Java J2EE.[4]
 Figure 2:Standard e-commerce three-tier architecture.

2.3. The role of infomediaries in e-marketplaces

Infomediaries are e-business companies that leverage the Internet to unite buyers and suppliers in a single
efficient virtual market and facilitate the consummation of transactions. Infomediares coordinate and aggregate
information flows to support e-business processes and provide value-added services to enhance the information
processes of the e-marketplace through deciphering complex product information and providing independent
and observed assessment of the commitment of individual buyers and sellers. This role of an infomediares
is applicable to both public and private e-marketplaces.
Infomediaries bring together buyers and suppliers by identifying buyers with needs for suppliers’ products and
services and facilitating transactions between them. An analysis of the infomediary business model (Figure 3)
shows that buyers and suppliers seek distinct goal-oriented information capabilities from the infomediary – they
provide decision parameters through their individual demand or supply functions and they seek buyers
or suppliers who can meet their requirements. This discovery activity involves buyers and suppliers searching
for a match of their requirements, through the infomediaries-enabled e-marketplaces. Infomediaries become
vital repositories of knowledge about buyers, suppliers, their product, and their service offerings. The
infomediary can provide valuable information by serving as the repository of experiential knowledge
of transactional histories and the nature of exchanges among buyers and suppliers. The scheme hereunder
illustrates extended infomediary-based-e-marketplaces. The infomediary provides valuable information to this
decision process. Transaction information from buyers and suppliers is collected to develop knowledge
to inform the discovery process for subsequent transactions. [7]
 Figure 3: Infomediaries facilitate transactions between buyers and suppliers in e-marketplaces and become
vital repositories of knowledge about transactions in the e-supply chain

Collaboration between buyers and suppliers across e-marketplaces require the transparent flow of problem-
specific information across organizations. Such information transparency goes beyond the technical integration
of systems. It requires common language to express context-specific constructs and relevant business rules
to assist autonomous system entities and decision makers in solving specific business problems [8]. Without
integration of intelligence and knowledge across e-marketplaces, the benefits of intelligent e-chains remain
elusive. In addition, the volatility and dynamic nature of the marketplace must be considered in systems
designed to reduce cognitive load on humans.

3. AGENTS-ENABLED E-MARKETPLACES

3.1. Mobile agents and intelligent agents

The agent term was already introduced into the computer science in the late 1970s within the artificial
intelligence (AI) research.
The agents are able to move to the e-marketplaces through the Internet and can be initiated from different
computer platforms and mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. The agent can trade directly with
a number of other participants in an e-marketplace including humans and other software agents. They can also
move between several e-marketplaces to complete trading tasks. After making trade arrangements, the agents
can move back to users’ locations carrying the notification of a prospective trade. Typically the final decision on
the trade transaction can be made by the users who can accept the deal or engage in further negotiations.[9]
Agent can be described as in individual collection of primitive components that provide a focused and cohesive
set of capabilities.
Mobile agents need a special software system as a living environment on each platform, which should
participate in a mobile agent network. Thus, every platform in the network covers a network-connected host
with a special application for receiving, sending, starting, and executing agents [10].
Figure 4 shows the most important services of an agent environment such as security (for data and code
of mobile agents as well as for the system services for protection against misuse and destruction by mobile
agents), communication (for enabling agent interaction), management (for controlling agents, their resources
and communication), migration, persistence (for persistently storing agents and their data) and directory services
(for storing specific content).
 Figure 4. Mobile agent environment [4]

Advantages of mobile agents[4]:

a) Asynchronous -Computations could be outsourced to other powerful systems if the local resources are
completely overused. The agent could visit a host, which is able to process the given tasks and the agent
could even pay for the service. Thus, during execution no network connection is required, it is very
applicable for mobile devices with less computing power and memory.
b) Reaction on remote events in real time -A mobile agent can react as representative for a human on events
on a remote system, which saves the costs for the network latency in contrast to contacting a centric decision-
making instance.
c) Robustness and failure tolerance - A mobile agent is able to move to another system if the current host fails
even in case of a routine shut down for maintaining works.
d) State sensitive communication- A mobile agent carries its own state and so even the intermediate data within
a communication process. Thus, agents reduce network traffic in contrast to RPC.
e) Scalability - Mobile agents reduce long network transactions for example in case of performing many
calculation steps or processing a large data amount to a minimum because they transform remote processing
in local execution.
f) Semantic Routing- Detailed knowledge is not required about server names, offered services and their
parameters in contrast to Client/Server. Agents are able to autonomously find information about servers and
services by exchanging key words with servers.
g) Personalized services - Agents enable user-specific task processing.
h) Security - Sensitive data can be encrypted and safely carried inside agents through the Internet using their
own keys.
i) Mobile computing - Mobile users can take advantage using agents in three points [11]. A mobile user can
save network connection time, because of the short connection period, required for sending and receiving
single agents. The agent fulfills the tasks while the user is offline and a user has to be connected again after
starting a mobile agent only for a short period to receive the results. Most mobile devices own slow network
connections. Therefore mobile agents can help to increase efficiency through an agent-mediated pre-
selection, reducing the amount of transferred data. Mobile users have smaller computing power and memory
capacities. The shifting of computations to servers via mobile agents can help to save resources on mobile
devices. Only the results are sent back to the users’ devices.

3.2. Agent role and responsibilities in e-marketplaces

Buyer agents and supplier agents represent buyers and supplier in agent-enabled architecture. Infomediary
functions to enable information flows are realized through three agent types: discovery agents, transaction
agents and authenticated monitoring agents.
The particular agents perform following roles and are responsible for indicated activities – table 1.
 Table 1 Agents in e-marketplace [1]
Agent role and responsibilities
a) Buyer agent: the buyer agent represents buyer
interest and facilitates buyer processes in the
infomediary- based e-marketplace
b) Supplier agent: the supplier agent represents
suppliers’ interests in the infomediary- based e-
marketplace
c) Discovery agent: The discovery agent performs
the discovery role in the infomediary- based e-
marketplace
d) Transaction agent: the transaction agent performs
the transaction facilitation role of the infomediary
in the e-marketplace
e) Monitoring agent: the monitoring agent
facilitates information transparency by
communicating with authenticated monitoring
agents of other e-marketplaces in the e-chain
Information flows and agent behaviour
− Receives ontology to represent buyer demand
from e-marketplace
− Communicate buyer requirements to discovery
agent
− Receives discovered suppliers from discovery
agent
− Provide intelligent support to buyer in supplier
selection process
− Initiate and authorize transactions by
communications with transaction agents
− Receives ontology to represent supplier
capabilities from e-marketplace
− Communicate supplier capabilities to discovery
agent
− Receives discovered buyers from discovery agent
− Provide intelligent support supplier for assessment
of competitiveness in the e-marketplace
− Authorize and confirm transactions by
communications with transaction agent
− Identify suppliers that meet buyer requirements
− Identify buyers that meet supplier requirements
− Provide buyers and suppliers with reputation
information based on past transaction histories
− Provide buyer agent with information on potential
buyers for their goods and services
− Facilitate flows on information leading to transfer
of goods and services between buyers and
suppliers
− Facilitate information flows leading to
confirmation of authorized transactions
− Collect information on satisfaction levels of
buyers and suppliers with their respective
transactions
− Provide information to authenticated monitoring
agent of related e-marketplace on individual and
aggregate demand and supply conditions
CONCLUSIONS
Recent developments in e-business focus on the development of collaborative value chains between
organizations to deliver value to customers. The transparent flow of information and problem specific
knowledge across collaborating organizations, over systems that exhibit high levels of integration, is required
in order to enable such strategies. The growing complexity information sources and business processes requires
an alliance of mechanism for the ad hoc availability of knowledge, to supplement human analysis, intuition and
judgment.
The vision of agent-enabled infomediary-based e-marketplace described here can benefit from the incorporation
of Semantic Web initiative. This initiative forms a basis to build more AI-inspired knowledge representation
languages that are unambiguously computer –interpretable, making them amenable to agent interoperability and
automatic reasoning techniques. It is envisioned that numerous such infomediary based e-marketplaces, built
upon emerging technologies and accepted business ontologies, can provide discovery and transaction facilitation
for participants, which is the first step toward creating intelligent e-marketplaces.
The mobile agent technology might take e-commerce trading to the next phase. Mobile agents are intelligent,
independent, and pro active electronic representatives of businesses such as buyers, suppliers, customers,
or even whole companies which can relieve marketplace participants from lots of routine works. The mobile
agent technology can be a suitable approach for resolving the given problems. On the one hand intelligent
stationary agents add automated trading capabilities and intelligent negotiation models for example for auctions,
request for quotes, and request for proposals and on the other hand mobile agents can easily offer connections
to mobile devices such as personal digital assistants or mobile phones.
Agent orientation provides the next step in the evolution of computational modeling, programming
methodologies and software engineering paradigms.
Current e-commerce solutions provide catalog-based transactions and simple forms of electronic auctions and
negotiations. However, user demands increase. They want to manage more complex transactions that increase
the benefits of e-commerce for them. Mobile agents introduce an integrated standard data format. The agents
cover their internal data representation and allow users to manipulate the data only by using defined interfaces
such as messages and specific communication protocols. Agents are not only a communication format
or a middleware. Mobile agents are intelligent, so they can autonomously make decisions for optimizing
solutions or for finding optional possibilities for solving problems and they can learn and adapt with time to user
needs. Mobile agents are configurable for adapting to user experience.
Agent-based systems are efficiently applied in e-marketplaces. It is connected with the fact that critical roles
of the e-marketplaces include discovery of buyers and suppliers that meet each other’s requirements, facilitation
of transaction to enable information flows leading to the flow of goods and services between buyers and
suppliers; and support of decision processes that lead to the development of collaborative relationships between
e-marketplace participants. Infomediary provides knowledge services for the e-business processes
of organizations in a knowledge based-economy.
Companies that incorporate emerging technologies in their strategic vision can position themselves to realize the
significant first –mover advantages that can be gained through information integration and transparency in these
intelligent e-marketplaces.

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