Grid technologies to support B2B collaboration

In the context of the European Commission Project BEinGRID (FP6), the authors have defined a set of design patterns to develop software components based on service-oriented grid technologies. Some of these patterns have been used to improve the software components of a service-oriented grid middleware named GRid-based Application Service Provision (GRASP) that the authors have defined, designed and implemented in the frame of a former homonymous European Commission Project (FP5). The main improvement of GRASP due to the application of the BEinGRID design patterns is the support for the creation and life cycle management of Virtual Organisations (VOs). This paper presents the authors' experience and lessons learnt in adopting the GRASP middleware to set up a Business-to-Business (B2B) federated environment supporting collaboration among enterprises. The concrete case study relates to online gaming applications and the adoption of the software as a service business model to provide gaming applications. In addition, a set of lessons learnt during the analysis of several Business Experiments (BEs) of the BEinGRID project are reported.