Project No.: 5003-045326 01.03.96 - 31.07.98

Project leader: Dr. Heinz Lienhard, IvyTeam, Zug
e-mail: ivyteam@access.ch

Name of project: VHS umbrella project phase 1: Demonstrator: Virtual Software House

Partners: Prof. Rudolf Marty, IFA Informatik, Zurich

Funding: Sfr 272,290.-

Partial projects: 5003-045327 (Geyer), 5003-045328 (Jäger), 5003-045329 (Ingold)

Summary:
The present proposal is the umbrella proposal of the coordinated Virtual Software House (VSH) package. It comprises a demonstrator which will show the operability of a software house running entirely over a network. An optimized coherent business process, to be defined and implemented on the Internet, will feature the following aspects: electronic software marketing, secure software distribution over the network, online consulting, pay-per-use principle for the use of software, and electronic payment.

The goal is for the VSH to act as an electronic market for business process components which end-users can put together themselves to make up customer-specific distributed applications. Such components make a substantial contribution to cutting modelling time, which can be a key success factor. IFA, a consultancy firm, and Swisscom plans to test the demonstrator for some of their products. It is hoped that the Virtual Software House will open the door to the world market for small and medium-sized companies.

Cooperation:
The present proposal builds on the results of a project implemented by the lead applicant as part of the 1992-1995 SPP Informatics Research programme. Part of the network of the complete integrated project is already in place.