Each cluster contains a set of basic component software and a specialized set for the tasks that the cluster performs. The society of clusters supports organizations consisting of managers, service providers, and requesters or user proxies . Managers can task a service provider to perform certain activities. Requesters send specific support directives to the service providers. The service providers respond with assigned resources to satisfy that request and can generate an exception event indicating the request cannot be satisfied.
Service providers can also act as requesters when they require services from another provider.
See Figure 2 for a graphical representation of the relationships of these organizations. User proxies are clusters that represent the individual or business user specified in the particular electronic commerce process. These clusters represent the source of anticipated and actual requests for goods and services, either for individuals or for business units. An MEC template workflow contains subtasks, their dependencies, start time relative to the parent's, expected duration of the individual workflow steps, and a description of the resources necessary to execute the workflow. As the workflow execution occurs, the Workflow Manager monitors the workflow progress to understand when a workflow step should complete and how to manage events flagged during workflow operations.