Profiling of users according to the infobase, e.g. working practices and preferences of customers and suppliers. Intelligent prediction of user requirements for information processes. To be of benefit to the agents that they serve, the intermediaries therefore need to be able to access, procure and integrate third party services and applications into the client agents working environment. Yet, this does not solve the problem of adapting to and evolving with the on-line environment, since client agents need to determine when and how to react to actual or predicted market dynamics. All these facilities are services available to clients, albeit at a higher level.
Individual agents are therefore more correctly viewed both as customers and suppliers by degree.
There is then a situation where a market exists which is populated by users, users agents, on-line businesses and their agents. Conceptually at least, we can view this as another market in which the intermediaries face precisely the same problems as their clients did in their market. We may gainfully start treating an intermediary agent as an on-line business itself. To do this it would have to serve the existing market and possibly even create new markets in the same way as human business organisations. In order to operate within such a market, intermediaries will also need the facilities that they themselves provide for their clients.