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The project consortium is balanced blend of software vendors, service providers and research teams form all over Europe. 
SAP is the world’s leading provider of e-business software. Through the mySAP.com e-business platform, people in businesses around the globe are improving relationships with customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving significant efficiencies improvements throughout their supply chains. SAP Research is a worldwide organization responsible for researching, understanding, and developing new technologies and processes that may affect the future of SAP business applications. The primary goal is to be thought leader in the area of innovative and breakthrough information technology. Through research, creativity, and forward thinking, SAP’s Research project teams introduce new ideas for future solutions that may be of strategic importance to SAP customers around the world. SAP Research determines the business value of new technologies and then passes them on to SAP development groups for integration into new or existing product lines. Cefriel is the ICT Centre of Excellence of Politecnico di Milano and a unique centre where academic expertise and cutting edge business know-how meet and integrate. It was founded in Milan in 1988 through an agreement between scientific body, public sector, and industrial body. Research is a vital component of the centre: strict integration between research and its field applications is maintained and insisted upon at all times. CEFRIEL carries out research on pan-European projects and actively contribute to main worldwide standardization bodies. CEFRIEL has been working on Semantic Web since 2000 through a mix of research, innovation and education actions typical of CEFRIEL’s mission. CEFRIEL was and it is involved in EU/national funded projects related to the Semantic Web such as: WIDE (IST– 34417), COCOON (FP6 507126), SeCSE (FP6 511680) and DICE (Distributed Infrastructure for Cultural hEritage). eTel Austria AG (formerly RSL COM) is a major player in the Austrian telecommunications market since 1998, and a member of eTel Group. ETel Austria offers customized data-, voice- and internet products and associated services to both business and end customers. Currently eTel Austria AG is ranked second of Austria’s alternative telecommunications service providers. Founded in 1999, eTel Group stands for high-quality voice telephony as well as data- and internet services in central Europe. With the headquarters in Dublin, and subsidiaries in Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slowakia eTel Group is one of the leading telecommunications provider in central Europe. After the recent EU enlargement, eTel profits from this early entry into the markets of the CEE-countries. Focal point are services for the B2B sector and carrier services. Hanival Internet Services GmbH (Hanival) is an innovative IT service provider located in Vienna, specialised in working on the cutting edge between R&D and applied technologies/application programming. Hanival was founded as NIWA in 1998 and is a spin-off from the Vienna University of Technology and its key personnel have participated in EU founded projects. Being a member of KnowledgeWeb, Hanival is active in Semantic Web R&D on European project level. In 2005 the multinational Domain and Web Hosting Platform www.chillydomains.com was launched that offers domain and web hosting products with a focus on the Austrian and German market and the English Spoken world in a first step. Hanival brings to the project its long experience in developing advanced IT services for the telecommunication sector, its expertise in Semantic Web Services and its know-how in technical project management as offered to Austria’s top telecommunication companies. Beside the participation in various EU founded projects (DIP, ASG) Hanival succeeded in several national research calls too. The latest national research project is focused on the development of a Semantic Mediation framework for the integration of legacy data-sources. IBIS is a private research institute and software development company specialized in tool-support for ERP-centric Business Process Management. Established in 1994 as a spin-off of the University of Würzburg, IBIS has developed a comprehensive suite of tools for the automated deployment and maintenance of SAP installations based on the machine-readable representation of business rules and the automated capture of the transactional and internal data of ERP packages. One of the core tools developed by IBIS is the Reverser Business Engineer (RBE and RBE Plus™), which uses a set of 20,000 business rules to semi-automatically align the business processes executed with the configuration of the used SAP ERP package. IBIS has been collaborating with Siemens Business Services and SAP as software and service partners for many years. Customers relying on IBIS' expertise include Allianz (one of Germany’s largest insurance companies), BMW and Procter & Gamble. In addition, the Austrian government chose to work with IBIS in their implementation project. The laboratory is the European branch of IBM’s worldwide Research Division. The Zurich lab employs more than 200 researchers from over 20 countries, working on projects in computer science, communications, opto-electronics, and physics. In the area of security, current research is focused on privacy and cryptography, in particular identity management, intrusion detection, Web services, mobile and ubiquitous computing, and smartcards. The lab is technical lead of the PRIME project and has participated in several European Union and other government-funded projects. Much of this research has become or had a direct influence on IBM’s products and services. IBM Research has long-standing experience in business-process modelling and security. IBM researchers have contributed significantly to IBM’s business process modelling suite. In addition to that, there is a strong background in security modelling, policy languages, and business matchmaking. IDS Scheer covers the whole spectrum of IT consultancy from strategic consulting through software implementation to continual improvement of business processes. Major areas of focus besides Supply Chain Management and Customer Relationship Management are Business Process Engineering, Product Lifecycle Management as well as Business Process Outsourcing and Controlling Support. Being part of the ARIS Process Platform the software solutions ARIS Toolset and ARIS Process Performance Manager developed by IDS Scheer are world-wide brand leaders. This means that IDS Scheer is the only company in the international arena that can offer consulting and software for all aspects of business process management from a single source. A strategic co-operation with SAP makes the ARIS tools and methods standards for the NetWeaver platform thus offering for the first time standard software and process management as an integrated whole. IDS Scheer software is used by such blue-chip companies as British Telecom, DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Bank, Nestlé and Siemens for the analysis of their business processes. The Fraunhofer Institute (IAO) evaluates ARIS as the best software in this market. Analysts from the U.S. Gartner Group see IDS Scheer as the most innovative company world-wide for business process management. iSOCO - Intelligent Software Components S.A. is a privately held company founded in 1999 as a spin-off of the Spanish Artificial Intelligence Research Institute. iSOCO is the leading Spanish company in Semantic Web Technologies, evidenced by its participation in a dozen large, ambitious (international) R&D projects in this area. iSOCO commercializes several products: GETsee: a content aggregator for financial online information; Quotes: a powerful e-sourcing solution for conducting online negotiations between a buying company and its suppliers; and e-Invoicing, an innovative solution to exchange and manage electronic invoices between enterprises. iSOCO has also started to commercialize results of other EU projects, in particular the KnowledgeParser software that turns non-structured information into structured information. The Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck (LFUI, Austria) is one of the major research institutions in the area of Semantic Web and Semantic Web services technology worldwide, especially with the research group managed by Prof. Dieter Fensel, who is one of the leading experts in this field and has a strong record in successfully undertaking IST projects. The institute is currently involved in a number of FP5 and FP6 EU projects related to the Semantic Web and Semantic Web services such as: DIP, SWWS, Esperonto, SEKT and Knowledge Web. LFUI collaborates with international research institutions in Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore, and maintains project partnerships with leading industrial partners, like SAP, BT, or HP. Within the SUPER, the University of Innsbruck will contribute as a research partner and will mainly be responsible for adapting and extending Semantic Web services technology based on WSMO and the formal language WSML for semantic business process management. Since 1979, the MIP, the Business School of the Politecnico di Milano, has been one of the most prestigious schools offering business and management training to graduates from all disciplines. As a consortium, the MIP includes together with the Politecnico di Milano a number of national teaching institutions and various public and private sector industrial groups. As the Business School of the Politecnico di Milano, the MIP inherits the idea of appreciating technology as an essential tool to create, innovate and manage a company. In short, this is the main ‘value’ which characterises and differentiates the MIP-Politecnico di Milano. The MIP-Politecnico di Milano integrates the specialist know-how of the Politecnico with the concrete, practical and professional experience of companies and consultants. In collaboration with the department of the Politecnico di Milano and its related consortia (such as CEFRIEL), the MIP promotes applied research addressing development needs in various markets. Projects are mainly related to themes which are crucial for service, manufacturing and public companies management. In this frame the main areas in which researchers and professors at MIP are involved in are: strategy, marketing and CRM, innovation economics, planning and control systems, eBusiness, IT, production and supply chain systems, process organization and management, organizational behaviour and human resources management, project management, risk management, service networks management and regulation. MIP has a strong background in IST projects, the following is a short list of the most important ones: COCOON, IP in 6FP-IST (Building knowledge driven and dynamically adaptive networked communities within European healthcare systems), TERREGOV, IP in 6FP–IST (Impact of eGovernment on Territorial Government Services), QUALEG, STREP in 6FP–IST (Quality of Service and Legitimacy in eGovernment), CUTTING-EDGE, 5FP – IST (development of an extranet solution aiming at digitising the order management process within a textile supply chain) and KIWI, 5FP –IST (Building innovative knowledge management infrastructures within European Public Administrations The National University Ireland in Galway (NUIG) is the home a leading research cluster in the area of Semantic Web and Semantic Web services. These research activities are nationally funded by the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) for a period of 5 years. The overall mission is to combine Semantic Web technology with Web Service Technology into the concept of Semantic Web Services (SWS) that are the true foundation for eCommerce, eBusiness, Enterprise Application Integration and Knowledge Management. SWS allow making use of the Internet technologies to the fullest extend while providing ease of use, reliability, dependability and many more desirable properties. A competent research group contributes to four areas. Academic research will advance the area of SWS fundamentally based on sound methods. Technology will be developed turning the academic research into practical and scaleable algorithms, thus making research results usable. Application of this technology in real industrial environments provides the proof that the new technology around SWS is advantageous to real world problems in real world settings. And finally, dissemination ensures that not only the narrower community appreciates the advances but the wider community interested in new technology and its uses and benefits. NUIG has Hewlett-Packard, Galway (HP), as a key industrial partner providing real world application experience to apply SWS technology in an industrial setting. HP will test SWS and ultimately apply SWS in industrial settings for their customers providing an environment that allows for the advancement of SWS technology through real use. NUIG attracts additional industrial partners as well as additional national, European and international funding. In addition, co-operations with universities worldwide will be established building a network of research with the potential of additional research groups joining the institute as institute members. The expertise in Semantic Web technologies and Semantic Web Services is of vital importance for the SUPER project in order to combine SWS with BPM. Core competence: WSMX, the execution environment of WSMO. Nexcom Telecommunications is founded in 1998. The company is a telecom leader operating in 10 countries in Central and Eastern Europe (the largest network of alternative telecoms in CEE) and employing 250 individuals worldwide. Nexcom owns and operates switch facilities in London, New York, Frankfurt and Vienna where it is interconnected with most of the TIER 1 carriers in the world. The full array of integrated services provided includes wholesale traffic termination and origination to A-Z worldwide destinations, prepaid calling cards, post paid platforms for corporate and individual customers, call shops and call centres, web2phone, PC2Phone, internet access etc. In Bulgaria, Nexcom Bulgaria PLC (www.nexcom.bg) is a market leader with 45% of the alternative telecom market share. It operates a 24 city fiber network serving more than 6000 large and medium corporate customers. Nexcom operates a network of over 30 call shops in the country. The company was the first to launch a pre-paid calling card for integrated voice and data services. In 2003, the company was awarded a 20 year fixed telephony operator license. Nexcom is a major telecom player in Croatia and Romania as well. Nexcom has a JV with Lithuanian PTT handling most of the incoming and outgoing international voice traffic. Hermes Phone (www.hermesphone.com) is a Nexcom company targeting emigrant communities in EU, UK, USA, and Canada. The service offers unparalleled native language 24/7 support. Eyebill Interactive Solutions (www.eyebill.net) is a JV between Nexcom and Sirma for developing premium VoIP billing solutions. Eyebill is a Quintum Certified Billing Partner, VocalTec and MERA Networks partner. Ontotext is a knowledge and language engineering lab of Sirma, focused on research and core technology development for knowledge discovery, management, and engineering, targeted to applications in Semantic Web and Web Services. Ontotext carries out research in NLP, upper-level ontologies, ontology management, semantic web services. The lab is a leading Semantic Web technology provider, being the developer of KIM (semantic annotation platform), WSMO4J (semantic web services API), WSMO Studio (SWS IDE), and co-developer of Sesame (semantic repository) and GATE (HLT development platform). Sirma AI is a top-3 software house in Bulgaria and R&D backbone of Sirma Group. It has software implemented in the following domains: AI, b2b, CAD/CAM, e-government, CSCW, CASE tools, banking, C3/C4 Systems, VOIP billing, etc. In 1999, Sirma was awarded the European IST Prize. Open University Milton Keynes is a leading research institution in the fields of ontology and eLearning. The Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) is a purpose-built showcase lab housing some sixty researchers, technologists and designers. KMi creates and studies near-term future technologies for the ultimate benefit of Open University students, staff, industrial sponsors, and a mixture of local and global learning communities. Our research addresses fundamental questions at the core of learning and knowledge. 'Knowledge Media' encompasses a broad programme of research into new learner-centred technologies, including Internet-enhanced collaboration media, multimedia environments for disabled learners, intelligent agents, organisational memories, digital documents, scientific visualisation and simulation tools, informal and formal representations of knowledge - in short, innovative approaches to sharing, accessing, and understanding knowledge. Telefónica I+D is a 100% subsidiary of Telefónica S.A. Telefónica I+D was formed in 1988 in order to contribute to the technological innovation of the parent company, by performing research and development activities. Over the last few years, the line of work of Telefónica I+D has evolved to conform to the objective of becoming a services creation lab.. This objective is driven by the emergence of interactive multimedia services which are increasingly becoming a major force in the telecommunications market. Telefónica I+D employs over 1000 persons. More than 85% of them hold a University degree. Telefónica I+D bases its work on the use of the most advanced and competitive concepts and media. This requires thorough knowledge of the suitable technical capabilities over a range of basic technologies. The company has in depth expertise in formal methods, object oriented design and programming systems, software engineering tools, real time systems, data bases and knowledge bases, A.I. tool kits, knowledge representation and reasoning, man machine interface, and software tools for network simulation. The company has a computer centre, and special laboratories, such as an optical transmission, Human Factors, or a video services laboratory. Also, Telefónica I+D has developed an Innovation Plan, with the objective of anticipating solutions to the challenges that the future information society will raise. All the activities in Telefónica I+D are carried out conforming to an in house methodology, supported with tools, which have been awarded an ISO 9001 Certification in 1994. Telefónica I+D has participated in numerous European projects: eight RACE I, eighteen RACE II, IST, IAP, seven ESPRIT II, four ESPRIT III, and several TEN-IBS, TEN-ISDN, CTS, COST, BRITE, IST, eContent, IAP, Ten-Telecom, EURESCOM, Telefónica I+D continues this work through its participation on the 6th Framework Programme. Telekomunikacja Polska (TP) (Polish Telecom) is the largest public network operator in Poland with about 28000 employees. TP provides diverse enhanced services of voice and data transmission, radio-communications and Internet access. It co-operates with other operators in the area of fixed and mobile telephony and radio dispatcher communications systems. As a national operator, TP co-operates with international telecommunication organisations, such as ITU-T, ITU-R. The Polish Telecom Research and Development Centre (TP R&D) is a division of TP. The number of the employees is about 400. It provides the following services for TP: co-ordination of research and development projects, information databases, performs hardware and software systems development, pre-installation testing and quality measurement, network planning and design, and development and testing of new services. Taking into account experiences in developing of systems and services, Polish Telecom will provide the network operator and service provider point of view and will participate in new solution developing and testing. The Poznan University of Economics (PUE) is a major academic institution in the western part of Poland. It is the biggest and oldest business university in the region of Wielkopolska. Its origins go back to 1926, when the Foundation of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry founded the College of Commerce. Presently, PUE specialises in educating economists, managers and specialists in quality management in all sectors of the economy. The main subjects of research range from various aspects of Poland’s economic transformation to the preparation of Polish enterprises for competition within the European Union and the globalisation trends in the world economy. In terms of enrolment as well as scientific and academic potential, The Poznan University of Economics ranks among the leading economic universities in Poland. Since 2000, the University has come second in rankings published by such Polish magazines as Polityka, Rzeczpospolita, Perspektywy, Magazyn Businessman and Newsweek Polska. The Poznan University of Economics will be represented in the SUPER project by the Department of Management Information Systems. The research in the department focuses on widely understood information and knowledge representation, processing and management. This comprises all activities connected with knowledge of the whole corporation and every individual working for it. Therefore much effort is put on enhanced information technologies, namely on filters capable of supplying a variety of information systems with relevant information acquired from the Web. The Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TUE) focuses on fundamental/strategic technological research that is relevant for industrial or other applications. This contributes to the strengthening of the competitive position of trade and industry, and to the solving of social problems. Nationally and internationally, the TU/e holds a prominent position in the research fields of communication technology, materials technology, and catalysis. Moreover, the TU/e wishes to strengthen the field of bio-engineering. The TU/e is the commissioner of ten research schools recognised by the Royal Dutch Academy for Science, as well as two of the six Dutch top research schools and one of the four top technological institutes. The department of Information Systems (IS) headed by Prof. Dr. Wil van der Aalst is the group involved in this research project. The research of this group is embedded in the Faculty of Technology and Management and part of the research school BETA (a research school on operations management recognised by the Royal Dutch Academy for Science). The focus of IAAS (Institute of Architecture of Application Systems) is in the areas of workflow and process management, Service Oriented Computing, Web services (both, standards and middleware), Grid computing (both, standards and middleware), architecture patterns, systems architecture (scalability and availability, especially) and transaction processing.
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