This paper provides a definition of automated negotiation within electronic commerce. It outlines two barriers to automated negotiation, the ontology issue and the strategy problem. State of the art overviews are given of automated negotiation, specifically Negotiation Support Systems, intelligent agents, the auction mechanism, and online marketspaces. Both academic research and currently functional systems are covered, and several World Wide Web addresses are given for readers who wish to investigate further on their own. 1 1 While every attempt is made to provide current URL locations, the Web changes more quickly than print media can ever capture. Hence, some of the URLs may not be current or correct by the time this article appears. We will try to keep our Negotiation Project web site, http://haas.berkeley.edu/~citm/nego-proj.html, current with respect to these addresses. 2 1.

Success in today’s marketing arena can often depend on companies embracing effective new technologies and integrating them into their business model. In the computing service supply industry, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are commonly prepared and signed agreements between the service provider and its customers. SLAs should match business needs of both sides of the agreement as closely as possible. This paper focuses on at the steps and activities that the service provider can take to facilitate agreement. It proposes an automated way for creating SLA’s from a set of Service Level Objectives (SLOs). The SLA should achieve business goals, including the maximization of customer satisfaction. To automate the preparation of effective SLAs each company should set SLOs that support business needs. 1.