Smart distance principle for "sense and respond" enterprise systems

We propose the concept of a "smart distance" for complex enterprise systems and illustrate how to use it to adaptively connect dynamic and heterogeneous business objects, intelligent agents, and most importantly, human beings within enterprises. We illustrate the design of a generic agent architecture BESA, a Business Entity enabled, Smart distance oriented Agent architecture, and its application to a "sense and respond" system. With "smart distance" infrastructure operating within an enterprise system, the system can eliminate inefficiencies that are due to lags and latencies that exist in the traditional environment. With various entities at different layers, the enterprise system is expected to be able to sense and respond to market conditions quickly and effectively through a closed-loop hierarchical control.