A Web-Based Collaborative Environment for Concurrent Project Life Cycle Management in Networked Enterprises

The goal of the project “Web linking Heterogeneous Applications for Large-scale Engineering and Services” (WHALES, IST 99/12538) is to provide a planning and collaborative-management platform for complex distributed organisations working as virtual enterprises on large-scale projects. The WHALES architecture is a multi-tiered, multi-layered collaboration system which easily integrates with the existing applications that execute the intra-company processes at each node in a network of enterprises. WHALES is not intended to replace existing applications within an enterprise, but to functionally link the different companies involved in the project to support and enhance the inter-company processes that take place in such project management scenarios.WHALES offers a Web-based project environment and a rich set of functionalities that improve virtual organisations, in order to achieve faster and more effective results in the whole project life cycle.The system addresses the c-commerce market arena, which is considered to be one of the most promising e-business application fields for enterprise value-chain development.