No abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The previous generations of implemented B2B e-commerce hub solutions (e-Marketplaces) did not successfully fulfil the requirements of buyers and suppliers ("Participants") in different business domains to carry out their daily business and online commercial transactions with one another because of their inappropriateness, and lack of flexibility. The limitations of these provided solutions came from a lot of architectural and technological challenges in the provided technical architectures that were used to build these solutions. This research aims to provide a proposed architecture to build integrated B2B e-Commerce hub solutions. It also aims to make use of bottom-up/top-down approaches to building an integrated solution and to resolve the reasons for the failure of previous generations of B2B e-commerce hubs. Design/methodology/approach -The research uses the EDI reference model, which is provided by the ISO organization to survey and analyze the challenges of previous generations of B2B e-Commerce hubs solutions and their architectures. The study develops a proposed solution architecture based on the recent approaches to building IOSs to build a B2B e-commerce hub solution architecture that can be used to implement vertical B2B e-commerce hubs (vertical e-Marketplaces). The paper assesses the capabilities of the proposed solution architecture for building vertical B2B e-Marketplaces by applying the proposed architecture to the building of a vertical B2B e-Marketplace for the oil and gas sector in Egypt. Findings -Previous B2B e-Commerce hub initiatives failed to extend their products and services to their "Participants", and required substantial investment and effort from each "Participant" to join such a B2B e-Commerce hub. The failure of these IOS projects lies in their inability to integrate B2B e-Commerce networks based on IOS and consequently, they supported very few partners and "Participants". These IOS approaches did not resolve the existing challenges of B2B e-Commerce hubs, especially in the realm of interoperability. Originality/value -The main contribution of the proposed architecture comes from the creation of a clear automatic path between a business ...