Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A.

Link to partner web site

www.eng.it

Company introduction

Founded in 1980 and established in Italy, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A is the leader of the Engineering Group consisting of 11 firms specialised in different IT services, but sharing the same cultural identity and mission. Financed by private capital, the Engineering Group operates in more than 20 locations in Italy, and in 2004 achieved consolidated revenues of about 300M€ with more than 3000 employees, thus further consolidating the Group's position as one of largest private enterprise in the system and business integration market sector in Italy. To better support sales and development, Engineering is structured in three main business divisions covering the three reference market sectors on a territorial basis. Moreover, to assure a constant capability to increase the value and the competitiveness of the company, Engineering has an operational R&D department since 1987.

The R&D Department, driving the R&D initiatives for the whole Group with almost 100 researchers and a wide cooperation network at the international level, is organised to work in strict cooperation with the three business divisions in order to facilitate both the knowledge and the technology transfer process as well as the direct involvement of production staff within the research initiatives.

The main areas of interest of the R&D Department are concerned with Service-Based Software Engineering, Service-based Infrastructure, Security Engineering and Services for Digital Content and New Media. This policy - based on strict synergies between the operational and the R&D divisions - has proven essential to generate a wide number of opportunities and contracts with large organisations like Benetton, Telecom Italia, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, AIPA, Ministero dei Beni Culturali, and many others. In particular, the commercial successes achieved have progressively increased the company's trust and confidence in the importance of investing in research and innovation activities, allocating an annual budget of around 5% of the global turnover and a global foreseen investment in the period 2003-2005 of almost 30 Million Euros.

Since 1987, current and past research initiatives have been accomplished at European level, most recently within the 5th EC Framework Programme IST, TEN-TELECOM, eContent (namely, Archware, Homey, P2P Architect, TNT, COMPONENT+, CBSEnet, Fin-tech, ECO-ADM, InfoCitizen, BankSEC, IB, Eusland, Chance, TradeX, Train.Me. CLARiFi, Ecolnet, I-MASS).

Engineering R&D is now participating to the EC 6FP with several projects on different action lines. The most important ones are:

SeCSE IP, where we are coordinator on the "Open development platforms for software and services" action line. BRICK IP, were we are coordinator on the "Cultural Heritage" action line. Diligent IP where we are an involved partner on the "Research Networking Test beds" action line. SERENITY IP where we are coordinator of the project and contribute to the development of the solutions and involvement in the research activities.

Despite its international vocation, Engineering R&D Department participates also to nationally funded programmes with several research projects (namely C-CUBO, eMMA, MAIS, TeSCHeT). The long tradition in participating in research projects, combined with its intimate industrial nature, allows the Engineering R&D Department to be the coordinator of several of the abovementioned research projects both at the national and European level.

Key personnel

Domenico Presenza. He got his University Degree in Computer Science in April 1989 at University of Pisa. From 1989 to 1992 he has been working in the R&D Laboratory of Engineering S.p.A as researcher. In 1992 he joined Finsiel S.p.A. as researcher and where he held different positions. In particular, he has participated in different national research projects as team member. In July 2000 he joined again Engineering S.p.A. His main competencies concern conceptual modelling, Distributed Computing, Multi-Agent Systems, Interaction Design, and algorithms for automatic layouting.

He is currently the Project Director of the SERENITY integrated project.

During his professional life, Domenico Presenza has been author of different scientific publications presented at international conferences.

Claudia Pandolfo. She received her University Degree in Physics in June 2000 at University of Rome "La Sapienza". In July 2000 she started a collaboration at the Robotics and Information Technology Division of ENEA, within the CLARiFi project (IST), whose objective was the creation of a software component broker. She was involved in the evaluation of the broker prototypes. In March 2001 she joined the R&D Laboratory of Engineering S.p.A as researcher working in the CLARiFi project. In May 2001 she was involved in the EUSlanD project (IST), whose scope was the creation of a open system for the use of Local and Regional governments, based on a shared knowledge management model. Her involvement in the project was related to the validation of the system an to the preparation of the verification tests. In April 2002 she worked in CBSEnet (IST), a network of excellence in the area of Component-based Software Engineering. In December 2002 she collaborated in the Component+ project (IST) concerning the preparation and execution of the pilot project aiming to validate the approach proposed in the project. In 2003 she was involved in the MAIS project (MIUR) regarding the design and implementation of a platform enabling the composition and orchestration of e-services. She is currently working in the SERENITY project in the research activity that aims to provide Security and Dependability solutions for workflow and services.

Involvement/Role in the project

The involvement of Engineering concerns the following main area:

• Risk assessment: ENG will contribute to the MASTRE's Security Assessment Model by investigating for systemic models of risks;
• MASTER Architecture: design of mechanisms enabling supervisory control mode for the MASTER's architecture;
• Singalling infrastructure: decentralised adaptation mechanisms aimed to assure survivability of the signalling infrastructure during on-going attacks limiting availability of resources;
• Enforcement infrastructure: enforcement mechanisms suitable to enable joint (human/computer) monitoring and enforcement of policies and mechanisms aimed to adapt predefined responses to the situation (attack/violation) in hands;
• Assessment infrastructure: design, prototyping and evaluation of the MASTER's control cockpit supporting: security governance, security situational awareness and, coordinated response to security incidents. ENG is leader for Activity 6 - "Assessment Infrastructure".