Scenarios of Next Generation Grid Applications in Collaborative EnvironmentsA Business-Technical Analysis

Abstract

The Grid has the potential to make a significant advance beyond the Internet, by turning it from a passive information medium into an active tool for creating and exploring new knowledge. Nowadays, this potential is becoming a reality and is emerging to Next Generation Grids (NGG) thanks to the far more cost-effective and universally applicable technology. Taking into consideration that Grids started delivering benefits to their adopters, this book chapter focuses on providing a business–technical presentation of two potential NGG applications, from two competitive and highly dynamic markets, including complex collaborations, which have shown rapid growth over the past decades; the supply chain management and the Cargo Transportation Logistics. The authors present a set of NGG components, the adoption of which in the aforementioned application domains addresses efficiently a set of technical issues ranging from performance to dynamic negotiation, and tackle the main trends and challenges in the corresponding business sectors.