Periodic Report Summary - EMPOWER (A semantic service-oriented private adaptation layer enabling the next generation, interoperable and easy-to-integrate software products of european software smes) The EMPOWER project's rationale and objectivesBuilding information systems as compositions of semantic web services is considered as the next step in information technology evolution, since it enables software integration by combining loosely coupled interoperable pieces of functionality at a semantic, abstract level. In addition, the semantic representation of information in ontologies is expected to deliver formal service descriptions and to facilitate data consistency due to knowledge sharing between humans and applications. The proposed research initiative is intended to address all issues: data integration and business applications interoperability, semantic web services and ontological representation of information.The vision of the EMPOWER project is to facilitate the creation of the next generation, loosely-coupled, interoperable and easy-to-integrate commercial-off-the-shelf software products of the European software SMEs, leveraging the quality of the application software and the integration services delivered to their customers, by providing the enabling technologies for the ad-hoc exposure of pieces of functionality from each application software, based on the emerging semantic web services technology.In order for the consortium to come up with the above mentioned vision, the EMPOWER project has a three-fold focus that will be achieved through the following research and innovation related activities:- Objective I: to provide the European software SMEs with an innovative framework and the enabling technologies that will allow them to design, develop and maintain a semantic service-oriented private adaptation layer upon each of their application software products, facilitating the standardised creation and ad-hoc exposure of pieces of functionality from the application software, utilised as loosely-coupled, interoperable and easy-to-integrate modules for building evolutionary information systems for their customers, leveraging the quality of the application software delivery and integration services towards their customers.- Objective II: to validate and evaluate the research results by developing proof-of-concept SMEs-specific prototypes, proving the usability, applicability and adaptability of the proposed, innovative EMPOWER semantic service-oriented adaptation framework and environment in the development and delivery of loosely-coupled, interoperable and easy-to-integrate enterprise services exposed from proprietary business software products of the participating European SMEs.- Objective III: to facilitate the take-up of the EMPOWER research results by the software development SMEs.The 'research for SMEs' project EMPOWER is led by LOGO and a consortium consisting of eight partners from six EC member states and associated countries (i.e. Hungary, Romania, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Norway), including software SMEs, technology providers, as well as, research institutes and universities from the academia. Other report summaries Periodic Report Summary 2 - EMPOWER (A semantic service-oriented private adaptation layer enabling the next generation, interoperable and easy-to-integrate software products of European software SMEs)
