The research project Symphony has successfully been completed. The objective of Symphony was to develop and disseminate an online marketplace that enables customers and businesses to compare, select, combine, book and manage IP-based telecommunications products (ICT products).Related business transactions no longer have to be handled separately with each provider. By combining products, new use cases can be created that can provide users with added value. 

Symphony can therefore be particularly useful to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These companies need easy, comprehensive access to digital tools and ICT services that are quickly available, flexibly scalable and of high quality.

Symphony's first phase was successfully completed in August 2016 after two years of operation. The main result of Phase I was the exemplary proof of the fundamental feasibility of the generic technical combination of two complex ICT service types based on an ontological description and on dynamic configuration masks.

The results of the second phase, completed in November 2018, are the practice-oriented extension of the range of ICT products to be integrated and the creation of an ICT platform that presents a variety of products in a comparable way, providing users with simple, comprehensible and fast booking as well as administration of services.
The project successfully sought contact with established companies, SMEs and start-ups in order to integrate the needs of ICT providers into the online marketplace. These contacts led to a series of early adopters who contributed constructively to the project and showed a strong interest in using the platform.

As partner in the field of standardisation, DIN identified existing norms and standards in the ICT sector in the context of platform economics during the course of the project and offered advice in the need assessment with focus on standardization. Following this, a standard was developed which specifies requirements for the participation in the developed platform. Titled "Marketplace for cloud-based ICT products — Requirements for platform-capable ICT services", this DIN SPEC 91392 provides guidance for ICT providers on how to deploy ICT products on the Symphony platform and it describes necessary steps to enable a process automation (e.g. booking a service or communicating with other services).

Project duration:

09/2016 to 11/2018

Project partners: 

• University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen
• Verband der Anbieter von Telekommunikations- und Mehrwertdiensten (VATM) e. V., Berlin (Association of providers of telecommunications and value-added services) 
• adesso AG, Dortmund
• IN-telegence GmbH, Cologne

Project funding:

Symphony was funded by the BMWi (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy) within the scope of the German government’s “High-Tech Strategy 2020”.

Funding code: 01MT16010