Workflow Migration Supporting Virtual Enterprises

Multi-enterprise processes (MEPs) are the means by which Virtual Enterprises (VEs) may efficiently coordinate their resources and establish and manage their supply chains. The Collaboration Management Model (CMM) developed in MCC provides a framework for modeling and implementing MEPs. In this paper we propose to extend the CMM with workflow migration, that is, with the ability of workflows to transfer their code and execution state to another host during run time. This permits the enterprises in a VE to agree upon abstract workflows that consist of placeholder activities capturing the need for inter-enterprise services. Abstract workflow execution involves its migration to the enterprise sites that provide the services its requires. At each such site, abstract workflow execution involves (1) refinement and extension of activity placeholders based on local knowledge and (2) enactment of the resulting concrete workflows. The migration of workflows improve the collaboration between organizations with strong local decision autonomy and specialization, since it allows refining the workflow specification during its execution and enables dynamic choices of different implementations of the same activities. The migrating workflows are naturally suitable for mobile environments, where disconnection of hosts is normal and the network bandwidth is at premium.