Executive summary
This doctoral research work introduces an integrated approach, consisting of architecture, a methodology and a technological platform, which aims at supporting the Engineering and Operation of Collaborative Networks (CN) in the context of both Virtual Organization Breeding Environment (VBE) and Service Entities (SE), considered as main enablers of that process.
When engineering Collaborative Networks, many perspectives may be considered, among others: partners’ selection strategies, trustworthiness development, negotiation approaches, operations’ planning, value systems or service level agreements. 
Focusing on the operation phase of a CN, in this Thesis the role of Enterprise Interoperability as design principle of distributed systems and its adoption as implementation strategy will play a preponderant role, by guiding all the solution space development, either at architectural as methodological support.
Complementarily, since the proposed solution also will require proper software implementations, this work takes advantage of the Service Oriented Architectures approach, which is used as design pattern and technical support during the implementation of the distributed information systems as Collaborative Networks will require in supporting their actual operations.
Consequently, considering all the topics being described – Collaborative Networks, Enterprise Interoperability and Service Oriented Software Engineering – the main contributions of this Thesis can be arranged in two main groups.
First group comprises all the conceptual and methodological contributions – introduced in chapters 2 to 5 – and detailed in chapters 6 to 8. There, readers will find the architecture and the methodology which provide an integrated approach for managing VBE, CN and SE.
The second group of contributions are related to technical issues and they include both the platform implementation and the validation plan described in chapters 9 and 10, respectively.
Finally, this document finishes with a statement of main conclusions and the expected future research actions gathered from it. 
All together, they prove evidence about this Thesis and its potential applicability both in industry and academia.