HEADS project, co-funded by the EU under the 7th Framework programme, leveraged Model-Driven Software Engineering and generative programming techniques to provide a new integrated software engineering approach which enabled the advanced exploitation of the full range of diversity and specificity of the future computing continuum. The main scope of the HEADS project was to develop an open-source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) supporting the collaboration between platform experts (having a deep knowledge of a reduced set of platforms) and service developers (needing to deal with a large set of platforms to develop added-value services). This IDE included a Domain Specific Modeling Language and a methodology for the specification, validation, deployment and evolution of software-intensive services distributed across the future computing continuum. The HEADS IDE benefit services developers by allowing them to easily exploit a set of heterogeneous platform (mobile devices, sensors, smart objects, etc.) in the design of their cloud based services. The HEADS IDE also benefit platform experts who can capitalize their knowledge of a specific platform as a reusable plug-in for the HEADS IDE. Depending on the platforms and commercial objectives the HEADS plug-ins can be developed with different licensing models ranging from open-source to fully proprietary.
The HEADS consortium comprised of six partners: Stiftelsen Sintef (SINTEF), Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), Geographical Infrastructure Solutions Limited (M2Mzone), Tellu AS (Tellu AS), Software AG (SOFTWARE AG) and Athens Technology Center S.A. (ATC).
ATC was one of the two use case providers of the project. NewsAsset, a commercial project owned by the company was enhanced based on HEADS objectives and envisioned achievements. ATC was leading the requirements and scenarios elicitation work package and activities. ATC was also the dissemination manager of HEADS.
The project started in October 2013 and had a duration of 42 months.
