EnComPAs-2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| EnComPAs-2 | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Website | EnComPAs-2 website |
EnComPAs-2, acronym of Enabling Community Communications – Platforms and Applications – phase 2 is the second phase of the EnComPAs project labelled in the CELTIC call 1 which has run from April 2004 to September 2006.
EnComPAs-2 focuses on the implementation of an end to end provisioning platform and converged residential services suite, including the Extended Home concept, new scenarios such as the car, and scenarios combining both home and outside home environments and the ambient intelligence concept (advanced user profile gathering, seamless service continuity).
The mission of the EnComPas-2 project is to significantly increase the user acceptance of networked systems and applications within the Extended Home concept by enabling and creating innovative interoperable value-added networked services.
The starting point for the project is the outcome of the successful CELTIC EnComPAs project. The project started on May 2007 and will end on April 2009.
Contents |
[edit] Introduction to EnComPAs-2
The EnComPAs-2 project will focus on the implementation of an end to end provisioning platform and converged residential services suite. These areas fit the home services market trends, enabling Europeans companies to assume a leadership position. The starting point of the project is the activities completed in the Encompas phase 1.
By distributing services throughout the home and virtually anywhere (centred in the emerging Social Media Applications (SMA) and e-Health related services), it aims at supporting the communication needs of the many social communities in which families take part (school, local communities, hospitals, colleagues, hobbies, friends, family…) around the extended home environment. The service domains are selected to be complementary with the ones developed in EnComPas phase 1. Regarding the infrastructure, the system incorporates Encompas phase 1 platform, implemented through a standards based residential gateway. The platform includes the network and service management layers, but adds components to ensure service delivery (WAN to LAN), service continuity and profile information gathering, to implement the ambient intelligence in different scenarios. The goal is to build an end-to-end system from the users to the service and content providers in the extended home environment.
[edit] Previous research: The EnComPAs project
The EnComPAs project enabled the creation of a system and converged residential services suite that laid the infrastructure for new consumer's experiences and new Telco operator's revenues. This area seems to be a future market that will generate new revenue streams (as revenue sharing) and enable Europeans companies to assume a leadership position. By distributing services throughout the home (fast and shared Internet access, multimedia content, remote control and access, home automation, and home security/safety), it aimed at supporting the communication needs of the many social communities in which each member of the household takes part (school, colleagues, hobbies, friends, family…).
[edit] Objectives
EnComPAs-2 focuses on the Extended Home concept including a broader list of scenarios that will be decided and described during the project. Some potential extensions have been identified as starting points: services outside the home, on the streets, in the car, and scenarios combining both home and outdoor environments. An additional objective is to implement service continuity of the applications, including handover and nomadic services.
The application design process is focused on identifying, developing and deploying services and applications that are attractive and provide a better user experience in everyday life for the end-users, with special focus on user communities and context aware applications. Some building blocks of transversal applications, such as personal content management, multiple device TV watching, and customization of end devices, are also within the scope of the project.
The provisioning platform used in EnComPAs phase 1 will be reviewed and extended, with the aim to allow the inclusion of content and services for large numbers of end users in multiple scenarios. This platform follows a layered approach: network management (TR69 based, including service provision assurance at network level), service provisioning (OSGi service aggregator, including customization and automatic gathering of user profile information) and application management to implement service continuity and context awareness techniques.
Finally, the results will be tested at European level in laboratories, existing demonstrators and precommercial field trials to assure technical viability and user acceptance as well as to study the related operational and business aspects. The aim is to reach a critical mass of users, applications, services, and contents.
[edit] Extended Home Concept
In the extended home scenario, the resources and services are distributed over several physically separated domains that are interconnected and interoperable. The resultant extended home is a virtual domain that enables the user to have similar application experiences as if he was accessing services in his primary home. At the end, the key aspect consists in the integration of services with the environment of the user, so that he loses the conscience of using intensively different technologies.
To achieve this goal, some new challenges are needed to be faced, both technical and social. The first of them is the environment and the background which has evolved:
- The home is now the main scenario but not the only one. Other scenarios are to be taken into account: when the user is driving, when he is walking in the street… The technologies, devices and possible services should be adapted to these scenarios. Indeed, one main aspect is the implementation of the service continuity between the different scenarios: For example, one question to be addressed is how a service provided in a car should move to the home scenario.
- As mentioned, the applications should be provided in a natural way for the end users. This implies that the applications need to be adapted to really fit the different users’ living standards, with minimal user intervention. To perform this operation, it is needed that the users and the context are properly identified, parameterised and that the applications collect user preferences automatically and are able of applying different profiles to different users.
- User acceptance of the applications and services is also crucial to develop the new ambient applications that will fit the expectations, as they will continue to be attractive, useful and easy for the end users.
- Last but not least, these scenarios (services and devices) need to be correctly configured and managed in an efficient and effective way, to be able to provide the services for the residential market. Therefore, a platform, flexible and adaptable to the different scenarios is also needed to correctly provision all these new services
[edit] Main results
The results of EnComPAs-2 project fall into three major categories of different nature:
Platform development: The evolution of the platform developed in EnComPAs phase 1 will result in an application provisioning platform with new functionalities. The remote home network management, including the configuration of the home devices, will include automatic diagnostics and user triggered configuration mechanisms. In order to allow ambient intelligence, the platform will be capable of creating user profiles and managing information regarding presence, customization and context awareness. The possibility to deliver continuity of services between different domains of the extended home will provide true nomadic services. This platform will implement the service aggregator model and support multiple service providers.
Services and applications development: The design process for developing services and applications is also a target of research in EnComPAs-2, developing further a people centric co-design approach, introduced in EnComPAs phase 1.
Tests and trials: The output from this activity is key as it was shown in EnComPAs phase 1. EnComPAs-2 will continue to build the integrated test-bed that was initiated in phase 1, allowing services and plat form to interoperate in tests at the European level. User acceptance tests and the posterior analysis of user responses will be shared to contribute to the European weft.
[edit] Impact
The successful results of EnComPAs phase 1, such as MyOwnTV, deployed in the city of Lommel, proved relevant to recent trends of the residential market. The challenge for EnComPAs-2 is to broaden the range of available services and the scenarios where they are provided. This is a superset of the fixed to mobile convergence initiative, now a main concern for telecom operators. As these services should be provided seamlessly and virtually anywhere, an impact is foreseen in the customer care procedures. The challenges for service providers and operators are quite high and should be studied. However at the same time, the opportunities to enlarge the potential market of the extended home applications with plug and play solutions, hiding the technologies, are very promising and interesting to the business actors.
The development of services through a market and user oriented methodology is expected to have an impact. The scenarios will contribute to the growing knowledge of ecosystem awareness as well as to the relatively new Social Media Applications.
