Business enhancement and creation in Rural Environments thorugh a Control Middleware that introduces NGN enablers

This paper describes the architecture designed and developed by the IST FP6 project “C@R: Collaboration at Rural” which involves all key actors of traditional and new rural businesses in the process of improving its efficiency, productivity and competitiveness through the adoption of information and communications technologies. The solution is based on building collaborative working environments made of interactive services with better usability, utility and ubiquity. An innovative approach is applied since researchers learn from end users in real environments o “Living Labs” in an iterative process and cyclic of consecutive designs and implementations. From the technical point of view, the concept of “Collaborative Networks” is brought up, which consists in defining a control layer or middleware that integrates the enablers of the operator networks with the other hardware and software resources. The result is an interactive CWE that improves the performance of current business and puts the necessary conditions to promote the deployment of new business in the rural areas.