The eBusiness Interoperability Forum (eBIF) and the Enterprise Interoperability Center (EIC) strive towards the same goals for the benefits of eBusiness in Europe. In particular these are to promote the interoperability solutions in business standards, to the benefit of all stakeholders concerned. In order to underline this and to be able to act as efficiently as possible, on 8 February 2007 a collaboration agreement was signed between Petra Frenzel (SAP), Director General of the EIC and Peter Potgieser (Equens), Chairman of eBIF.
eBIF serves as the European platform for considering interoperability solutions related to eBusiness, and making strategic recommendations on standardisation activities required to achieve this. eBIF does not develop actual standards and specifications, which is the task of specific consensus groups in CEN/ISSS or elsewhere.
The EIC is an open, neutral, and independent organisation which aims at enabling value nets for business-to-business processes. Interoperability requirements for a business process will be defined and interoperability profiles will be developed consisting of a consensus based common process in combination with selected and interpreted messaging standards.
With this agreement, EIC and eBIF affirm their mutual intent to work cooperatively to share information on standards and methods to facilitate interoperability in electronic business and trade in the context of the EIC activities and of specific eBusiness standards issues under consideration in eBIF.