An assured environment for collaborative engineering using web services

This paper describes an application of the TrustCoM environment to support secure contract based collaboration between companies using managed web services. The application scenario describes a consortium of engineering companies that seek to upgrade a customer's fleet of aircraft to provide in-flight internet capabilities. The environment supports the consortium to collaborate so as to take advantage of the market opportunity. In order to reduce the risks of collaboration, the environment provides assurances of the past performance of consortium members, of the current performance of each member to meet their contract and service level agreements, and the secure control of access to resources. As a result of a member's performance, the consortium dynamically reconfigures itself and initiates a collaborative business process that enlists new members to join and contribute to the negotiations with the customer.