ETH Zurich : Computer Science : Pervasive Computing : Distributed Systems : Research : SAP Research Switzerland

Collaboration with SAP Research Switzerland

A Research Project in Cooperation with the Distributed Systems Group

As part of a long-term initiative, the Distributed Systems Group is collaborating with SAP Research Switzerland through its Campus-based Engineering Center (CEC Zurich).

Currently we are working on the research project SENSEI. In order to realise the vision of Ambient Intelligence in a future network and service environment, heterogeneous wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSAN) have to be integrated into a common framework of global scale and made available to services and applications via universal service interfaces. SENSEI creates an open, business driven architecture that fundamentally addresses the scalability problems for a large number of globally distributed WSA devices. It provides necessary network and information management services to enable reliable and accurate context information retrieval and interaction with the physical environment. By adding mechanisms for accounting, security, privacy and trust it enables an open and secure market space for context-awareness and real world interaction.

In the past we worked on the research project SOCRADES. The SOCRADES project is a European research and advanced development project. Its primary objective is to develop a design, execution and management platform for next-generation industrial automation systems, exploiting the Service Oriented Architecture paradigm both at the device and at the application level. The SOCRADES consortium is made up of 15 partners from 6 European countries.

Our research is focused on device to business integration. One goal is the design and implementation of an integration architecture. The integration of real world devices and their information into high level business processes demands for new methodologies and approaches different to the ones applied in regular Web Service integration. For example connectivity plays a major role in real world business applications, which is not the case in regular business software.

A second goal is the development of prototypes showing real world scenarios and application examples. Through this, we can show and communicate the possibilities of device to business integration and demonstrate the capabilities of our integration architecture. Here we are currently emphasizing on the service side of devices and how they can become part of a global service ecosystem spanning over several locations and organizations.