Web-based development of complex information products

This article focuses on drawbacks of web architectures, considering the need of virtual enterprises. The article suggests that sharing information without regard to physical location through Internet, has promoted new forms of virtual business and social endeavors. A virtual enterprise is an organization unconstrained by geographic location, and a membership intersecting multiple traditional organizations. All that is needed to form a virtual enterprise is at least one common goal, a shared information space, a means of coordinating users' efforts, and people willing to share the work. The Web provides the minimum for setting up such enterprises by enabling identification of shared goals and the people who share them, by providing a standard mechanism for reading the shared information space, and by supporting coordination via e-mail archives. The infrastructure improvements described in this article are applicable to any virtual enterprise that includes creation of complex information products as one of its goals.