The INDENICA project addresses the fragmentation of future and existing service delivery platforms, which are the technological basis for the Internet of Services. Already today there is a plethora of service platforms; in the future additional service platforms will be created, increasing the high degree of heterogeneity already existing. In addition there is an increased need to integrate non-SOA platforms into service-based applications. To cope with these problems, INDENICA proposes the concept of virtual service platform with variations in functional and quality requirements. The project will provide methods, architectures, components, tools and assets for the development of domain-specific platforms while emphasizing openness and interoperability.

INDENICA will:

• Tame the overall complexity of service platform development caused by fragmentation. This will be achieved through methods, architectures and tools that support the development of context and domain-specific platforms along with the services.
• Support platform convergence and interoperability to avoid the increased dependency on external service and platform vendors. This will be achieved by providing a common basis for families of platforms that integrate system management and interoperability capabilities right from the start.
• Provide a reusable infrastructure for platform development and support the automatic deployment and the monitoring, governance, and adaptation of services in a Virtual Service Platform.

One of the major contributions of INDENICA is the convergence of systems into service ecosystems. This convergence is achieved through the Virtual Service Platforms that enable users to compose, configure, share and use services at a higher level of abstraction than today’s service platforms. INDENICA will provide a major contribution to the Future Internet by providing Virtual Service Platforms as a novel domain-specific approach to create service-based applications. In particular, this approach will ease the development of domain-specific, service- based applications by resolving the quality, interface, and technology fragmentation that can be observed in today’s service platforms. Finally, INDENICA will ease the interoperability of service-based applications by providing a runtime architecture, as well as support for automatic deployment, monitoring, governance, and adaptation of services in a Virtual Service Platform.