Marketplace As A Service
Basic MaaS Concept[edit | edit source]
SMART4ALL’s concept regarding the proposed marketplace aims to transform the term one-stop-shop to one-stop-smart-shop through its proposal for a Marketplace-as-a-Service (MaaS). Based on this concept MaaS aims to act as an active enabler of knowledge and technology transfer, synergetic research, and development as well as education in industry and industrial involvement in the academic education. At the same time, it will be the main and central point of publicity and continuous updates on the project’s developments of any type and output to all interested collaborators. Through this idea, the main role of the MaaS is to reduce the development effort (e.g., moving from an idea to a competitive prototype) for stakeholders (startups/SMEs/mid-caps) that are doing businesses in one of the four SMART4ALL pillars (Digitized Transport, Digitized Agriculture, Digitized Environment, Digitized Anything). To this end, MaaS will include cloud services, related platforms, tools and middleware frameworks, and design service facilities mainly focusing on open-source technologies. Moreover, AI based customized services will be included in the MaaS e.g., personalized links to relevant events, customized web pages, and matchmaking (technology suppliers-technology receivers) activities.
Concluding all and following the main concept of the SMART4ALL MaaS as depicted in the Figure 1, the developed and continuously expanding portal will offer a nexus of different and diverse artefacts, which will be tailor fitted to specific challenges/objectives posed by each registered user. The proposed artefacts will target specific KPIs as identified in the green blocks and thus satisfy the needs and requirements of a wide range of different and diverse types of target audiences. Specifically, we are confident that a wide audience is targeted comprised by technology providers, suppliers, funding agents and investors, innovation managers, business developers as well as policy makers. To achieve the specific objectives a respective data model has already been defined and developed and adequate technologies have been identified as presented in D5.1. However, as the project progresses and more knowledge and experienced is gained, any kind of adjustment and modification may be required to make sure a sustainable, flexible, extendable, and expandable platform is offered.
Goals of the SMART4ALL Marketplace[edit | edit source]
The main goal of the proposed Marketplace as a Services (MaaS) is to serve experts and non-expert third-parties alike to access all the artefacts offered. A critical aspect will concern ICT technologies (open-source mainly) that will reduce the development time of an startup/SME/mid-cap that is doing business in one of the four SMART4ALL thematic areas. However, the proposed MaaS will promote more multifaceted goals, with AI based matchmaking and collaboration support comprising the most important of them, differencing SMART4ALL Marketplace from other relative efforts. More specifically, SMART4ALL MaaS’s goal will be to offer information for the CLEC CPS/IoT technologies of high interest to the end-user specifically targeting:
- Open and proprietary cloud services related to SMART4ALL technologies.
- Open and proprietary computing and communication platforms related to SMART4ALL technologies.
- Open-source tools and middleware frameworks related to SMART4ALL technologies.
- Open-source design tools related to SMART4ALL technologies.
- Training (model-based) open course related to SMART4ALL technologies.
SMART4ALL as a project and DIH target “Prepare for Growth” Services. To achieve this objective another novel goal of MaaS will be to focus on tools like open-source project and product management tools, tools for creating and maintaining business plans and financial tracking tools. In the same context, more traditional goals comprise by offering a “Helpdesk services and FAQ sections” and Active Forums for technical questions. Through this complete set of capabilities and novel services and features, the final goal of the developed MaaS is to reduce the development time of PAEs, allow the applicant to build a prototype or increase the Technology readiness level (TRL) of the transferred technology with the least possible effort. Yet another goal of increased added value will be to continuously and increasingly facilitate access to venture capitals able to invest in products and ideas that will comprise the outcome of SMART4ALL PAEs and not only. Both project’s consortium structure and the supportive ecosystem around it (e.g. expressed through support letters) are a clear indication of this critical objective. Finally, apart from offering access to wide range of artefacts or assets SMART4ALL’s MaaS aims to actively form connections amongst a) SMEs and mid-caps that are interested in going digital to b) (Competence Centers) CCs and SMEs possessing CLEC CPS and the IoT competencies and experimentation resources and c) other auxiliary yet mandatory competencies (such as business) required to create results with a product/market fit. In this way, SMART4ALL DIH will be able to a) fosters customer-business-market oriented product development and b) harvests the fruits and at the same time feeds back smart specialization strategy.
Services offered by the MaaS[edit | edit source]
General Services[edit | edit source]
The SMART4ALL MaaS will offer various services (including training services) to third parties focusing mainly on open technologies. The Marketplace will be designed with specific places for each thematic pillar and will include a querying mechanism to facilitate the searching operations for expert and non-expert users. Apart from pure technical offerings, it will also include project and financial management tools and services as well as useful links to all relevant websites. To this end, MaaS will include cloud services, related platforms, tools and middleware frameworks, and design service facilities mainly focusing on open-source technologies. Moreover, AI based customized services will be included in the MaaS e.g., personalized links to relevant events, customized web pages, and matchmaking (technology supplier-to-technology receiver) activities. As part of the project, specific effort will be devoted by the SMART4ALL partners to evaluate the readiness of various open-source technologies and prepare useful application notes about the correct usage of these technologies in start-ups/SMEs/mid-cap companies.
Matchmaking Service[edit | edit source]
As the marketplace is meant to bring technology providers from academics and industry together with adopters one of the most important aspects of the SMART4ALL marketplace is the matchmaking service. Matchmaking allows to connect requests to offers. This means, that the registered MaaS users can ask for specific thematic connections which will be established with the matchmaking service. This is currently done by experts which have an excellent overview of the partner within the network in Europe and companies which can be potential partner for a specific request. In a later stage of the project, this matchmaking will be supported by AI in terms of algorithms which perform an even cognitive support by combining several parameters to find a match.