Muse over university organisational ecology in action and service-oriented architectures

This paper muses over two e-engineering projects, which use service-oriented architectures to navigate the complexities of e-engineering age. One of these projects is a Monash University Software Engineering (MUSE) portal, which has been developed to provide a central mechanism for group interaction, collaboration and knowledge aggregation to assist students in completing their final year capstone projects. Learning in part of a wider ecology, and benefits from interdependent resources and expertise in an organizational grouping forming a Web of interconnected parts. Collaboration and cooperation sustains this ecology (Maiden, 2003). The paper explores the interconnected aspects via service-oriented architectures and organization units (be it for a course or organizations in a consortium). The paper details the service-oriented architecture of our MUSE portal which is aimed at sustaining the capstone group´s ecological requirements of collaboration and cooperation in their group project. The second project is about an E-commerce (B2B) Technology Infusion Project for Australian Rail Manufacturers (ARM). It uses emerging innovative business models with Web services and associated technology to deliver B2B as a new technology infusion program initiative from the research organization (MUSE) to the industry consortium of ARM. It is aimed at providing business integration through Web services (B2B) for a cluster of small to medium enterprises (SMEs). We reflect on (muse over) how the organisational ecology is achieved for the MUSE portal and for the ARM Consortium´s B2B project. Services are discrete, self-contained applications that sit within the MUSE portal framework. Web services suit the decentralised nature of this B2B project.