Contract-based cross-organizational automated processes

The number of cross-organizational automated interactions or processes (B2B) is expected to increase strongly along with the trend to outsource non-core business tasks. Furthermore, the possibility of offering new services or processes based on the composition of both internal and external services is raising this number even faster. Many tools and technologies have been developed to implement these interactions. As the interactions become more complex, these new technologies are similar to existing workflow management systems, which are currently being adapted to handle these cross-organizational aspects. In fact, there has been extensive research in all the domains of workflow management systems, including specification languages, workflow patterns and execution environments. However, in the context of automated cross-organizational workflows, little attention has been paid to the consequences of component maintenance and version evolution. In this paper, we highlight the similarities between the field of dynamic reconfiguration of distributed applications and the evolution of the components of a cross-organizational workflow. Then, we emphasize the need for providers of cross-organizational outsourced processes to be contractually bound to the consumers of these processes.