Defining business networks

We can summarize all these idea using the concept of a business network:

A business network is a collection of participants and assets than undergo a life cycle described by transactions. Events occur when transactions complete.

You may wonder what this means. After all that build-up, we're telling you that a couple of apparently simple sentences describe all this complexity?

The simple answer is yes—and we'll soon explain by describing in more detail what we mean by participants, assets, transactions, and events. Then, you'll see that all this rich behavior can be described by a relatively simple language vocabulary.

A deeper idea

In fact, there is a deeper idea behind business networks—that the language and vocabulary of technology should closely match that of the business domain, removing the need for significant translation between business concepts, and technology concepts. Business networks move away from the idea of disconnected technology by describing the underlying...