Ambient intelligence as enabling technology for modern business paradigms

Nowadays the competition among companies, joined to the environmental protection rules, is so compelling that they should not only be on the top of technology in they area, but also run their business according to life-long models. The emphasis on the product post-sale life is common for these models. The most popular model is product lifecycle management (PLM), for manufacturing companies, or service engineering (SE), for service-oriented companies, and, for both, common paradigms are in maintenance, with conformance-to-use certification. This paper introduces basic research results achieved in application of Ambient Intelligence (AmI), and suggests considering maintenance as a cross section of the two business paradigms.