The purpose of this introductory chapter is to define several important types of integration and collaboration issues and describe briefly some research efforts to model them. Integration is an intelligent response to an increasing fragmentation of distributed organizations. Information integration is necessary to gain better control over the different units or functions of an organization, leading to improved performance and, potentially, better results. With the advent of computer and communication techniques, information integration has become more feasible, but at the same time, also more necessary. Increasing amounts of information are generated and handled over complex networks of users, clients, and servers. As a result, successful integration is viewed as a useful competitive ability.
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