The iBICOOP middleware: Enablers and services for emerging pervasive computing environments

Content sharing and social networking are two activities that users now routinely engage in on a range of connected devices. However users have to face arcane configuration panels for setting up connectivity, heterogeneity in the human-machine interaction models, differences in devices' capabilities and a profusion of tools/services/applications to perform their tasks. Adding to this complexity is the need to interact with people not known a priory. To support users in such environments, we currently develop the iBICOOP middleware to minimize user effort in collaborating with other users and also provide seamless access to user data across different networks and devices. The iBICOOP middleware provides core services for distributed content storage, partnerships, naming & discovery and multi-network communications management. More complex services, such as data synchronization or content sharing, are then built on top of these core functionalities. iBICOOP is aimed to be deployed on home/enterprise servers, mobile devices and also in the 3G IMS infrastructure in order to truly leverage both Telecoms networks and the Internet. Central to our development is the use of standards in order to achieve interoperability with similar proprietary/closed systems.