Digital Ecosystems of Small Companies in the Enlarged Europe

This paper presents a technology architecture supporting operation and interaction of European SMEs through mediators. These are typically sectoral and/or regional entities (e.g. entrepreneurial associations, chambers of commerce, service providers) able to support contacting, contracting and collaboration through innovative ICT services. The primary focus is on SMEs from New Member States, paying attention to linguistic and cultural diversity. To this purpose much effort is spent in knowledge management, through a simple but flexible structure of local, common and global ontologies. The envisaged architecture has been designed to be compliant with the Digital Business Ecosystem infrastructure, to make the SEAMLESS services accessible and usable to a large audience.