Service-oriented Architectures Status Quo and Prospects for the German Banking Industry

In today’s global environment, where millions of business transactions are completed every single day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, B2B interactions are forced to transcend common collaboration strategies. Businesses are becoming aware of the fact that B2B enterprise interoperability technologies represent the wave of the future. The new direction for business communication overcoming present communication barriers and offering cost-effective and prompt information flows that can be turned into business advantages. The FLUID-WIN project has developed an innovative enterprise interoperability platform focusing in particular on the integration of different domains along the supply chain. Namely, it has established a unique and consistent communication platform, which smoothly integrates logistic and financial business services and their related service providers into B2B manufacturing networks. The authors use the term B2(B2B) to characterize this business-to-network relationship and novel approach.