PEERSONA: Personal Server Network for enterprise and communities

Project PEERSONA intends to develop and trial a novel in-the-network peer 2 peer platform which enables enterprise users to consume services and content efficiently across multiple devices (PCs, mobile phones, PDAs, display screens) within an enterprise (staff and customer) community-based framework. The platform is a network (called the Peerouette Network) of personal network-based servers (called Peersonas) hosted by Internet Service Providers or Mobile operators, where each Peersona server 'belongs' to an end-user. Such a network based peer to peer system enables true convergence and a lowest cost digital distribution channel for 1:1 peak on-demand data distribution. The platform enables scalable broadband and mobile communication and distribution of services and media from specific enterprise data to large multimedia formats. Enterprises can interact directly with users and create flexible policy rules governing information use. access. This project is highly relevant to the Networked Enterprise call. The growing penetration of broadband as well as multimedia enabled mobile handsets and devices, content and service consumption and sharing is bound to grow in the future and new modes of personal, group and enterprise organization of both content and services are required to manage, enhance and facilitate end-user participation. New collaborative working methods need to be underpinned by a overarching framework that will support new forms virtual enterprises, access control and mobile and remote working. The proposed network of personal servers acts as a service communication and distribution in the network peer-to-peer grid and as a media distribution grid. Such a network will provide technology for building a rich digital ecosystem of services and content. The personal server grid will support dynamic and distributed working combining dynamic and ad-hoc created secure P2P networks. An enterprise community toolkit (ECT), a deliverable, enables provisioning and auditing of content and services for enterprise user groups (staff, workgroups, customers, suppliers), as well as the creation and assignment of service related policies. The project consortium includes members of the entire enterprise value chain, incuding a mobile operator (O2), fixed operator (BT), data centre company (Telecity Redbus), an end-user with defined staff and customer service needs (Transport for London), a media company end user (BBC) and several enterprise mobility and insfrastructure developers (DSR, Peerouette, Tactical Systems).