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.