INTERMEDIATION AND INFORMATION BROKERAGE
Jerry Foss, GPT Ltd (now Marconi Communications),
New Century Park, Coventry, UK.
jdfoss -at- iee.org
This paper was presented at ISSLS'98 (International Symposium for Services and Local accesS),
Venice, Italy, March 26th, 1998
Abstract
Information brokerage is
a range of intermediary services between consumers and
info-sources in an increasingly commercial trading
environment. In this scenario automated on-line businesses
emerge to provide information services, their construction,
deployment and management is considered as net-centric
component-ware: they continually re-assess their market and
self-organise to fulfil their optimal business development.
1. Global Informisation
Most aspects and commodities in society are becoming represented as information stored and accessible in the world's networks: Business, entertainment, human activities, organisational activities; activities of the world's communication and information networks themselves; information about information. There appear to be two main families of information services evolving: (i) Information trading and processing, and (ii) group activities. (..and probably (iii) the ones we don't yet know about). [1] As more people are empowered with computing and communications capabilities, new and unforeseen services and applications will emerge. The internet will evolve beyond our current imagination and expectations, so the growth of the Global Net is unpredictable.
A number of services are
required for the administration of info-businesses, and also to
guide users/customers through info-transactions. One of the
mechanisms envisaged to provide these services in an integrated
manner is the concept of the information broker. A number
of broker services are appearing on the WWW. Many of these
are “shopping” agents (especially for compact discs),
like the Andersen “Bargain Finder” [2]; Firefly [3], based on the MIT HOMR, the
Helpful On-Line Music Recommendation service, compares
similar client profiles to deduce its recommendations to the
enquirer. The Firefly site then added a CD “shopping trolley
service”, and now also offers communal media services.
This is an example of the way in which “new media”
services can quickly diversify. Many web sites now offer
services which blur the boundaries between a number of services -
news, publishing, entertainment, shopping and other services are
seamlessly bundled into entrepreneurial on-line malls. The
significant trend is the speed at which these sites can re-define
their service and re-organise their site accordingly.
2. Extending the Concept of
Information Brokerage
In this paper, scenarios are described that extend the concept of brokerage: Here, a broker is considered to be a managed on-line collaboration of a range of functions (examples are given below) and acting as an intermediary between the customer and a range of information sources. Brokers are not entities which can be rigidly defined - they organically evolve and operate in a free market of networked services and service components (component-ware) e.g. applications, macros and agents configured into the best-fit for the current task or business phase, independently created and managed by third parties. The broker's position in the trading model (between client and service) is suitable for administering the legal functions. Networked services may also be constructed as separate components which are brokered - traded by virtue of their availability, cost, affiliations, licenses, etc, and constructed on-line, probably (self-) organised into information networks (info-nets), creating an info-underworld of federated distributed heterogeneous information networks.
Current views of Information Brokerage seem to be limited to search and retrieval functions. However, in the context of the maturing information services and deployment of network resources there is an increasing range of intermediary services which need to be applied between the suppliers - information warehouses, and (enquiring) customers. A Brokerage:
l offers an intermediary range of
functions to aid the customer with on-line services.
l can bridge the gap between what
is available and what consumers want, e.g. - librarians for
entertainments (games, video or audio); travel agents;
insurance-brokers, etc.
l can undertake a global trawl of
potential information services and suppliers, and assess the
suitability of a selection of information products for the
customer.
l may take on other functions
managing the info-traffic flow between suppliers and customers:
e.g. - be able to build up service packages for clients,
customising and integrating applications according to the
client's needs, perform marketing and promotion and carry out
market research for their own use or on behalf of clients or
Infoware Suppliers.
l negotiate payment schedules for
the service - per performance, per usage of application,
etc. A broker role may be employed at a corporate gateway
to the network for information service exchanges. Brokers
are in a position to continually re-assess the market to maintain
awareness of future potential user requirements for infoware.
This is not a proposal for a standardised hierarchy: it is a description of the commercial trading relationships already existing in real life. These roles will often be independent, organically evolving businesses, manned or automated. However, if we consider that information is continually sold, re-sold, repackaged and reworked, the roles of customer, supplier and broker become blurred. So we see that each user and each business can have elements of each role - a client who obtains information can rework it, and sell it, thus becoming a supplier.
2.1 Information Brokerage - Services and Functions
Brokers may specialise in a number of sectors: Corporate information networks, Public sector information services: e.g. Local Authority Information Services; however the largest brokerage sector will almost certainly be commercial information businesses. Brokers serving a specific sector of industry or commerce may provide services which are specialised to that sector. Some of these services may be permanently resident within the broker configuration, or available from external sources and bought/rented-in as and when necessary.
Functions offered by a brokerage may include: Information Search Retrieval and Processing - may also co-ordinate the subsequent processing of the information; Maintain a Self-learning Infobase about (and on behalf of) the user. The information base grows with the user's business experience and may be incremented on a per-transaction basis; Profiling of users; Monitoring for items of interest to the user; Protecting the user from intrusive access from other users or agents; filtering of incoming information; Intelligent prediction of user requirements; Commercial Negotiation between customers and the providers to attain a contracted agreement including costings of sources and services; this may also include rights of future usage of information; Technical Negotiation - to match the customers' installation to the required network-services interface; Access, procurement and integration of third party services and applications into the user’s working environment; Communications Services Management - administration, management and invocation of services, e.g. diversion, conferencing facilities, access and user group integrity, etc. (c.f. Intelligent Network); Subscription to Nets and Webs - Independent commercial information services may require contracted subscription access. The broker may provide a negotiated temporary subscription or proxy subscription for non-subscribers to these services and networks; Collaboration and Federation with other Brokers - A customer's view of the broker may be as a single front-end, but the services may actually be implemented by a federation of many brokers; Administration of Information Rights and Revenues (IRR) - Many interested parties are eagerly proposing schemes for protecting the rights of info-commodities. The issues related to copyright in an open information network are rather complex, however the broker is in a position to administer royalties and revenues distribution, and possibly info-rights; Market research on behalf of the infoware suppliers. The broker is in a privileged position to accrue information on all transactions he conducts, as well as monitoring which suppliers have (or haven’t) various items. This may be a large source of revenue for many intermediary services. These functions may be provided by separate components, e.g. applications and agents which are responsible for each of the functions - search engines, negotiation agents [4], trading models, etc.
So in this “extended” concept of information brokerage a broker develops its core functionality and extends its repertoire as needed, as new market requirements arise. Brokerage, as with any business or service can cover a wide range of business-types - from large global comprehensive combines, down to small niche market services. However there are many intermediary functions which have yet to be identified for future requirements, and the “brokerage model” serves as a generic architecture. The customers (and suppliers) may need a wide range of intermediary services, and so they must decide whether to employ a broker who can supply all of these specific requirements, or if such a broker is not available. it may be preferable (or necessary) to employ the services of a number of brokers. A broker may “front” the collective services of a number of sub-contracted brokers.
3. Service Nodes; The
Info-Underworld
One of the possible methods of implementing future service nodes is for the node to acquire its service functions (applications, agents, etc) as/when it needs them; i.e. as a continual (re)assessment of the service's ongoing business trends and requirements. Service components are acquired from on-line suppliers and integrated to form a composite but self-contained service node. This is basically a virtual private network (VPN) configured into a suitable architecture to implement the required service. This method of service construction is applicable to many networked services, and brokerage services themselves may be utilised in this manner; however the construction of services in this manner will also need brokerage services to identify and commercially acquire the service components. Now let us consider that the service providers, their customers and suppliers are all on-line automated businesses.
The constituent service functions may be independently provided from on-line applications vendors, agent vendors, etc., i.e. applications software products for sale/rent from other independent retail outlets, or “information warehouses”. The service business needs to: Identify the current task (who the client is, what he wants); Identify the components and functions needed to perform the task (some of these may already be owned by the broker - others are additional, and need to be acquired); Initiate the (global) search for the additional required components; Negotiate and procure these components, including payments; integrate components into suitable architecture to perform the service for the client perform the service; Dis-assemble the service components when the service is complete; Allocate charges for the service performed.
Consequently the broker analyses the requirements and constructs its service (diagrams 2, 3). This requires the broker to locate the distributed functions. This may result in the formation of networked businesses which provide the specialised business of broker-support, i.e. brokers for brokers. The broker is also an end-user in its own right and would now be self-organising - automating its self-building process. The service business could be managed as continual self re-assessment. In this case the service continually re-assesses its business environment (e.g. on-line marketing) and reconfigures its component services accordingly. This scenario continues by considering that service platforms are recursive: The service formed by a network of components would now link with other services to form a platform at a higher layer, and so on. Consequently services at any specific layer are composites of services of lower layers. Many/most/all of these networked services are constructed in a fluid, commercial self-organised manner from networked components. In this fully mature net-centric service environment, intermediaries - brokers - are essential to enable the management and continuing deployment of service businesses.
One of the biggest users of future information services will be the communications and information networks themselves. Networks may trade with other networks for resources (e.g. network management agents, protocol handling, communications applications, etc.). Consequently there is a symbiotic relationship between the intelligent information infrastructure and the services that it supports. Given the real-time information trawling, self-organisation and service platform creation, there will be a dramatic increase in transaction traffic within the network.
The functions and services trawled in by the broker (including those for its own construction) may be subject to acquisition charges, application usage charges, etc. The broker building process thus acquires an information rights and revenues culture all of its own. These charges are of course either absorbed in the brokers' overall business, or is charged as part of the broker's service charge to the customer for this specific task. The broker can also raise revenues from advertising or market research and consultancy using derived information from the broker's business. These charges are the business of the broker in a free market.
4. Infonets, Intelligent
Marketing
So the role of an information broker is to locate, retrieve and integrate the constituent services from their owners, i.e. information/content owners; and then integrate and customise, if necessary. The broker may have to search and retrieve other services, for example filters, negotiation functions, management devices to act across the accumulated “raw” information content. The information product, the infoware, is constructed, probably specifically crafted and customised for the end-user. This may utilise the user's direct specifications (with his participation), or utilise a previously acquired profile of that user (or a mix of any or all of these options). Intelligent brokers can pre-empt these activities with intelligent marketing to predict their users' requirements in their evolving marketplace. A successful broker would reconfigure its own business to support these needs more efficiently and effectively to maintain a competitive business to its clients. Diagram 4 shows that a customer may be an automated business (similarly constructed of component-ware) seeking the services from an automated service provider (e.g. a broker). In diagram 5, one (or more) agents takes the responsibility to break out and browse ad hoc with other agents representing other infonets, for a number of purposes, e.g.: Trawling for information of potential interest to the user of the infonet represented by this agent; marketing the agent's infonet business to other infonets; Serendipitous meetings with other agents (for future references). In these liaisons, agents can compare experiences, swap or trade information of other associates (subject to previous contractual agreements and security). Even at this level, agents may utilise other agents which assist locating other agents, assisting inter-agent functions, etc.
Such agents may take on a
nomadic life, returning periodically to update their host.
This type of mobile agent may be utilised for policing and
monitoring activities in future information environments,
checking for abuses of rights infringements, etc.
Intelligent on-line marketing activities can be used to determine
the degree and nature of self-organisation of an on-line
business. Information businesses can fine-tune (or
re-construct their configuration) according to the findings of
on-line marketing, including automated brokering businesses and
intelligent agents. Hence - the underworld of traded
service components. There are inevitable issues about
allegiances and loyalty in federated multi-agent
systems. Some of the management issues are discussed in [5]. The service components
(including agents) are tradable commodities in the lower layers
of this service/agent-hierarchy.
5. Summary, Implications
A series of scenarios have been presented for the evolution of the Global Information Trading Environment. The scale and commercial nature of this environment requires the use of information service intermediaries which administer the access and selection of a number of information sources which are the basis of infoware products for the user. At the same time there is a need to manage and administer information processing activities across the source material to produce the required information product for the customer. On-line commerce is experiencing some understandable misgivings in these early stages of internet evolution. However potential traders and financiers eagerly anticipate a mature trading mechanism, especially for the administration of some of the legal issues, taxation, rights, royalties and revenues. This paper has presented brokerage in the context of a universal trading model in which brokerage is seen as necessary because of the sheer scaling problem as on-line commercial services drastically increase. This paper has also proposed that brokerage, as an intermediary, can administer the legal and commercial requirements of information trading in a number of market sectors - general public access to community information services; entertainment for domestic users; services for business users, etc.
Although the concept of information brokerage is not new, this paper has discussed an extension to the basic concept: the broker as a device to administer the commercial construction of service platforms in networks. This paper has also discussed the hierarchical way in which service platforms can be automatically constructed, and that this construction is itself subject to brokering for infoware products. In this scenario, it is suggested that a free market on-line trading environment for service platforms results in an informal recursive hierarchy of service platforms and components, i.e. a net-centric procurement and integration of service components. This scenario has also considered brokerage as a commercial business, and the management of these businesses, and their continual re-development in the evolving on-line trading environment.
The scenarios have described the dynamic nature of information networks - infonets of information processing nodes which are self-organising - reconfiguring their operations as they respond to real-time marketing of the environment they operate in. These characteristics need to be considered for the development of communications services, e.g. call and session processing, and also on the development of the intelligent network, both technically, and commercially. One possible brokered commodity may be processing capability: Surplus processing capacity may be identified in idle resources and networked to tasks or businesses in immediate need of more processing power; e.g. a brokered “global grid” for processing power.
So what are the implications? In this volatile info-underworld, will the latency of traditional monetary currencies be sufficient, or will information become its own global currency? More efficient and effective interfaces of the future will allow a seamless continuum between human neural activity and the mechanised networked information processes. Would a future global information network embrace all humans and all connected machines with little or no barrier between them?
These scenarios point to an automated information environment where information can, effectively, become “aware” of other information; “spatial” relationships between information clusters can be formed corresponding to similarities of content and potential interests. Informational groupings form affinities between each other, leading to natural clustering. This environment is suitable for spontaneous propagation of ideologies and policies. There is a symbiotic relationship between (i) the communications network which supports the information environment, and (ii) the information environment which carries (and even governs) the management processes for the underlying communications network. Would this mean that certain information can autonomously utilise intelligent technology to create an environment suitable for its own survival and evolution? Would this disallow specific nodes access to the network, including (some / all) humans? For now, in the global information trading environment, the world is your hard disk, and information is the most marketable commodity. Perhaps much of the value of information is its relationship to other information. Intermediaries to manage these relationships and to broker information trading may be the biggest market sector of the future.
References
[1] Foss, J.D.; Atkin B. C.
M.; Ackroyd, E: The Global Information Trading Environment:
International Symposium of Subscribers Loops and Services,
Vancouver, BC, 1993.
[2] Bargain Finder: Andersen:
http://bf.cstar.ac.com/bf/
[3] Firefly: http://www.firefly.com
[4] Jennings N,
Faratin P, Johnson M, O'Brien P, Wiegand M
(1996). “Using Intelligent Agents to Manage Business
Processes”, Proc. First Int. Conf - Practical
Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology
(PAAM96), London, UK.
[5] Decker, K.; Sycara, K.;
Zeng, D: Designing a Multi-Agent Portfolio Management System:
