The Software and Services Research Division develops technologies for integrated IT-Network service solutions in a number of areas. R&D on Internet Services targets two aspects: (a) value-added services for networked media e.g. through advanced features for IPTV, or for rich social media services spanning broadcaster, Internet, Web2.0, as well as home media, and (b)  the integration of services with sensor and actuator networks, including pervasive display networks, and in general the "Internet of Things". Maintaining security and managing trust and privacy is a key aspect of IT-NW services and systems and the security group within Software and Services Research Division provides underpinning technology, such as identity and access management, across many service layers. C&C Cloud and Smart Energy Grids are the key new directions followed by NEC which are strongly anchored within the Division: R&D on service management software platforms for Cloud computing is building on past experience in distributed services and service delivery platforms for NGN; service and network management techniques are being adapted to provide an innovative new platform for Energy Consumption Control.

Work areas of the Software & Services Research Division include:

The acceptance of Cloud Computing continues to grow, with telecom carriers targeting new revenue opportunities and enterprise customers becoming convinced of the IT cost savings that can be achieved. Cloud Computing is expected to provide the basis for the future Internet of Services and we foresee that key aspects for the transition will be the federation of multiple (including private and public) Clouds and the ability to rapidly and reliably develop and provide new services. NLE's R&D focus follows this with the target of services spanning enterprise to consumer needs and leveraging our competence in:  security, including distributed identity and access management; machine-to-machine communication and context-aware services; dynamic service composition and deployment. Looking ahead, we expect this to lead to a future Internet which in particular supports the integration of Services and Ubiquitous communication objects: the integrated Internet of Services and Things.

Security is a central challenge towards the Future Internet and Cloud Computing, if not often the most crucial aspect for customers. The next target is bringing security, privacy and identity to the cloud and the future Internet, for which some of our solutions are already the first step in a conventionally hosted environment.

ICT tools and environments will play a crucial role in future energy networks as they seek to achieve higher levels of energy efficiency through Smart Power Grids.  The Smart Grids will be able to be adaptive to facilitate the inclusion of renewable energies (with their typical variations in production), various storage options and the integration of controllable consumers and producers. Our current developments focus on an ICT service platform to support SmartGrids, the Energy Consumption Control (ECC) platform, which supports the stabilization of power grid operation by management of the electricity consumption of smart, controllable devices (load control). The basic idea is to balance consumption – in volume and time – with real energy availability.

For more than 50 years, television has been influencing our daily lives by informing us, entertaining us, moving us and in a way uniting us. However, the interactions between a viewer and the content and between people are only supported in a very limited way in today’s broadcasting technologies. Driven by the Internet as well as recent developments in DVB and IPTV, the TV has become an interactive multimedia station blurring the boundaries between traditional television and media consumption on one side, and interactive social media on the other. Trends from the Internet like User-generated Services, Mashup of Services, and an increasingly rich variety of channels are increasingly merged into TV content and services.
NLE is researching value-added services for network media and especially IPTV. One target is to allow users interacting with each other and the content they consume from the comfort of their home via the TV set. Our focus is on enhancing standard television by integrating it with telecommunication services, social networks and communities from the Web 2.0 world. This will bring viewers from all over the world closer together. The virtual living room and sharing of experiences significantly enrich the user’s life. Social media is not only there to be consumed, but also to be produced, changed, refined and re-used. Our work aligns with existing standards (3GPP, TISPAN and ATIS), has been researched in the European project iNEM4U, and will be extended in the ICT SOCIETIES project.

NLE’s Identity and Access Management solutions combine ease of use with interoperability, privacy and data protection. NLE developed the Virtual Identity concept in the projects Daidalos and SWIFT and developed the Relationship Manager allowing distributed access control in the health related project @neuist. We developed cross-layer Identity Management solutions for online services that respect user’s privacy. In SWIFT, we enhanced our solutions towards a distributed, integrated architecture supporting identity brokerage and distributed access control. Identity Management R&D is being continued in the DEMONS and IoT-A projects. NLE influenced standardization activities in Kantara, OMA, ETSI and ITU-T and drove the creation of an ETSI Industry Specification Group on Identity and Access Management for Networks and Services (ISG INS), of which NLE holds the Chair.

For several application scenarios, security is a key differentiator for sensor networks and M2M communication. In the German IPonAir project, NLE provided solutions for lightweight encryption, authentication and secure charging mechanisms for small end devices in future wireless, ad-hoc and multi-hop networks. Security solutions for wireless, ad-hoc and sensor networks were then developed in the Daidalos and UbiSec&Sens projects, in particular a complete security tool box for medium and large scale wireless sensor networks for widely varying requirements on scalability, robustness etc. The WSAN4CIP project is now working on wireless sensor and actuator networks for critical infrastructures with a focus on secure data storage and distribution. In SENSEI, we developed advanced security protocols for secure code update and robust data aggregation protocols.