Pilots

Software pilots in SPIKE

The evaluation of the platform created in the project will be done using the following cases as software pilots:

• Forming a business alliance with portal-based user interfaces to legacy applications and a workflow concept
• Management of user identities in the networked enterprise
• Documentation service in support of intra-enterprise product development 
• Information Hotel for documentation services involving multiple participants

Application cases

In the following cases, sample scenarios are described in which the SPIKE infrastructure can deliver a clear added value.

Case: Business alliances and identity management

Identity federation is the main application area for SPIKE at Infineon Technologies IT-Services (INF) and addIT Dienstleistungen (AIT). SPIKE aims to reduce organisational and technical overhead, such as introducing a quick and straightforward implementation of a collaboration infrastructure. This opens up new and more business opportunities to INF and AIT enabling them to offering their services more efficiently to customers from outside the Infineon and Siemens (AIT) groups. These companies plan to use the outcome of the project as a non-open product for setting up and managing identity federations between them and their partners.

SPIKE will enable generic portal-based user interfaces to legacy applications for alliance members and provide generic identity management services to administrate users of networked enterprises. In the SPIKE project, two targets will be pursued. First, a fully automated process involving portal-based user interfaces to legacy applications will be developed. Second, an identity management service that is generic enough for deployment in any business alliance setting will be designed.

Case: Intra- and inter-organisational offering of technical documentation services

Citec Information will pilot an intra- and inter-organisational offering of technical documentation services. The goal of this pilot is to enable close collaboration and communication between all involved partners in the documentation process. In this case, the SPIKE infrastructure will be deployed to aid the documentation service providers in communicating with other actors in the project and help them in accessing, refining and disseminating relevant project information throughout the product development organisation. This part of the case will have the character of intra-organisational cooperation.

Citec Information will be focusing on the novel semantic data transformation functionality of SPIKE, trying to make collaboration more flexible in terms of faster and easier exchange of differing data formats. The SPIKE infrastructure is also expected to create new business opportunities for technical documentation service providers. Based on the tight integration of documentation service providers into the information processes of product development organisations – enabled by the SPIKE system - new opportunities and a significant added value for the product development organisation itself will be possible. With the Information Hotel approach, Citec will provide the interface for the seamless flow of information between all involved parties.

While SPIKE provides the missing links for intra-organisational cooperation, it can be extended to inter-organisational business as well. This SPIKE-based approach will deliver a solution (called Information Hotel), which will unify and define methods and technology for the collaboration processes, so that documentation services can be offered under involvement of multiple parties. The Information Hotel will provide services for secure knowledge and content management between collaborating parties. This solution will lower the documentation costs on both sides, shorten the time-to-market for all parties and improve the quality of the documentation. The Information Hotel can be virtual (each party owning their own parts) or hosted, where Citec Information or another collaborator could host the environment. This case will be an example for the inter-organisational solution of SPIKE technology possibilities.