B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

388 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
13.6.1. The 3 Cs of prime importance
The 3 Cs of fundamental importance in a multi-agent environment are
communication, collaboration and coordination. Individual agents operate
with major knowledge and resource constraints to accomplish the given
goal, making these three Cs a necessity in a multi-agent environment.
13.6.2. Advantages of a multi-agent environment
The advantages of a multi-agent environment are:
• Modularity and Flexibility — A multi-agent architecture can be
easily modularized. Different teams can work on different modules.
The modularity and flexibility offered by a multi-agent environment
makes it an invaluable tool to automate and implement concurrent
B2B processes and practices, where there is no central control and
high level of dynamics.
• Information Sharing — Agents can share the information by communicating
with other agents.
• Efficient — Independent sub-tasks can be solved locally and speed
can be increased as agents working on partial solutions can process
complex instructions in parallel.
• Multimode Input — Different modes of interaction can be integrated
by the cooperation of agents.
• Learning/Adaptability — An agent can learn the preferences and
changing priorities of associated users. It can also learn about other
agents in the multi-agent environment to compete or cooperate with
them effectively.
13.6.3. Disadvantages of a multi-agent environment
The disadvantages of a multi-agent environment are:
• Performance and Scalability — There are still several unresolved
issues in multi-agent systems related to performance and scalability.
Environment requirements, such as execution of several mobile agents
simultaneously, slow down the system. Before adopting any specific