Towards Ambient Business: Value-added Services through an Open Object Information Infrastructure

Internet-based information sharing among different partners of the valuechain enables collaborative business. Beyond, applying ambient technologiesprovides new opportunities for gathering information ubiquitously fromvarious sources including physical objects, e.g. the movement of goods orcars, and virtual objects, i.e. the information trails created through customerinteractions. Granting public access to this wealth of ubiquitously gatheredinformation favors an unprecedented climate of innovation fostering the collaborativedevelopment of new value-added services by external developersand even customers. We call this Ambient Business. In this context, thepaper reveals empirical evidence and an appraisal of the emergent trendtowards Ambient Business. Further more we at hand point out how to ensurearbitrary access to information about physical products and virtual objectsby introducing the concept of the Open Object Information Infrastructure(OOII). As result new and innovative knowledge intensive products andservices will be conceivable by deploying this OOII as a publicly accessibledatabase.