Decentralized Business Process Modeling and Enactment: ICT Architecture Topologies and Decision Methods

Multiagent systems have been proposed in the literature as a suitable architectural and implementation approach for cross-enterprise collaboration, due to their support for decentral decision-making and peer-to-peer coordination, loosely coupled interaction, modeling support for the notion of electronic institutions, and built-in adaptability mechanisms. While we agree with this general view, we argue that different application domain and different market constellations require different types of architecture. In this paper we look at the specific problem of selecting an information and communication technology (ICT) architecture for cross-enterprise business process (CBP) design and enactment. Therefore we identify three important architectural patterns for CBP enactment. We then propose a decision method for architecture selection based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. Finally we illustrate the method by applying it to two application scenarios with differing characteristics. Robustness of the decision method is analyzed by performing a sensitivity analysis.