Computer in Industry Special Issue on 'Interoperability and Future Internet for Next-Generation Enterprises' Editorial and state of the art

Today’s global markets drive enterprises towards closer collaboration with customers, suppliers and partners. Interoperability problems constitute fundamental barriers to such collaboration. A characteristic of modern economic life is the requirement on continuous and rapid change and innovation. The success of an enterprise more and more depends on its ability to seamlessly interoperate with other agile enterprises, and to be able to adapt to actual or imminent changes. Flexible and adaptive interoperability of enterprises, with aligned business processes and information technology, thus emerges as a key business feature. This new enterprise reality calls for advanced technological support, preferably in harmony with technology developments of the Internet, which is our dominant universal communication and information infrastructure. The current special issue aims at contributing to a consolidation of the theoretical and empirical knowledge on enterprise interoperability, and at promoting novel ideas and early experience regarding the use and realization of the Future Internet vision to advance Enterprise Interoperability.