2. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium embodied with software associated with an enterprise, the software when executed using one or more computer systems is configured to: receive a negotiated meta-model over a computer network from a meta-model negotiation service, the negotiated meta-model describing collaborations between trading partners and incorporating more than two meta-model elements selected from a stored first and second set of meta-model elements, the first set of one or more meta-model elements comprising one or more supply chain elements, the one or more supply chain elements comprising one or more site supply chain elements representing one or more sites of a supply chain network that produces one or more items, one or more resource supply chain elements representing one or more resources of the supply chain network, and one or more buffer supply chain elements representing one or more buffers of the supply chain network, the second set of one or more meta-model elements representing the semantics of a machine-actionable collaboration standard, the semantics comprising a nature of a demand signal representing a demand and a software protocol used to communicate the demand signal, the more than two of meta-model elements describing a private collaboration standard unique to the trading partners for collaboration between the trading partners, the negotiated meta-model having been negotiated by the associated trading partner and the one or more other trading partners using the meta-model negotiation service; determine the semantics of the negotiated meta-model subsequent to negotiation of the negotiated meta-model, the semantics capable of being understood by collaboration software associated with each of the trading partners independent of any modification of the collaboration software; automatically collaborate with the one or more other trading partners based on the standard for collaborations reflected in the negotiated meta-model; and in response to receiving over the computer network the demand signal for the one or more items based on the negotiated meta-model and in accordance with the semantics of the negotiated meta-model, ship the one or more items by at least one of the one or more trading partners in accordance with the demand and the negotiated meta-model.
2. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium embodied with software associated with an enterprise, the software when executed using one or more computer systems is configured to: receive a negotiated meta-model over a computer network from a meta-model negotiation service, the negotiated meta-model describing collaborations between trading partners and incorporating more than two meta-model elements selected from a stored first and second set of meta-model elements, the first set of one or more meta-model elements comprising one or more supply chain elements, the one or more supply chain elements comprising one or more site supply chain elements representing one or more sites of a supply chain network that produces one or more items, one or more resource supply chain elements representing one or more resources of the supply chain network, and one or more buffer supply chain elements representing one or more buffers of the supply chain network, the second set of one or more meta-model elements representing the semantics of a machine-actionable collaboration standard, the semantics comprising a nature of a demand signal representing a demand and a software protocol used to communicate the demand signal, the more than two of meta-model elements describing a private collaboration standard unique to the trading partners for collaboration between the trading partners, the negotiated meta-model having been negotiated by the associated trading partner and the one or more other trading partners using the meta-model negotiation service; determine the semantics of the negotiated meta-model subsequent to negotiation of the negotiated meta-model, the semantics capable of being understood by collaboration software associated with each of the trading partners independent of any modification of the collaboration software; automatically collaborate with the one or more other trading partners based on the standard for collaborations reflected in the negotiated meta-model; and in response to receiving over the computer network the demand signal for the one or more items based on the negotiated meta-model and in accordance with the semantics of the negotiated meta-model, ship the one or more items by at least one of the one or more trading partners in accordance with the demand and the negotiated meta-model. 6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 2 , wherein the received negotiated meta-model is represented using extensible markup language (XML).