People should be able to use IT services as effortlessly as they flick a light switch, without caring where the electricity comes from. This network aims to make that vision a reality by treating computing power, data storage, and software as a utility—like water or electricity—that is always available, safe, and simple to use. The problem is that while smartphone apps have proven people want easy-to-use IT, the potential scope is far larger. Most users are blocked by real or perceived barriers: they do not trust services they cannot see, or they find setup too complex. The network will study these human factors and develop ways to build the same implicit trust people place in their car or power grid. If successful, this could transform how people interact with the physical spaces around them. Smart rooms that adjust to occupants, location-aware services that guide you through a building, and responsive environments that merge digital and physical worlds could become as mundane as boiling a kettle. The network will also work with government open-data initiatives, so that as more public data becomes available, new services can be built on top of it without users needing to know where the data came from or how it is processed.
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Smart phone apps have shown that there is a demand for easy-to-use IT functions, yet the potential scope and impact of easy to use IT is much greater. This network will promote research into providing access to a wider range of IT facilities that are simple to use, while users need know only that these services are available and safe to use, not where they come from and how they are provided. However, it is not enough to provide the services and the means of using them securely. The network will develop the understanding of the human aspects of such services: the barriers, perceived as well as real, that inhibit new users of the services. We rely implicitly on other things, such as our cars and our electricity supply, so a major Network facet will be in the area of "how can we encourage the same level of trust in IT services"; the network will tackle the the issues from a user perspective. An analogy with the traditional utilities of Power and Water is interesting. With Water we do care about the actual product as we do in part consume it directly! We also use it to drive a range of other processes. With electricity, while we do measure the amount we consume, most people don't actually think in terms of the current flowing though their mains circuits but in terms of boiling the kettle or switch on the TV - it is the service that the power enables that we focus on (at least until the power goes out). For IT this is even more true; for almost all the time we are not concerned with the infrastructure but with the services that this infrastructure can provide. Therefore there will be a strong focus in the network on such the provision of such services and also their operational management protocols. IT drives and is driven by technology, inescapably hardware is also IT and that it is now commoditised and therefore utilitarian and has the capability to alter dramatically the way people interact with the space around them by merging physical and digital spaces in a cost effective manner. Smart spaces, responsive environments, and location dependent services can fundamentally alter interactions between people as well as the space around them. These services depend at their heart on information and data. The ITaaU Network+ will therefore interact closely with governmental and research council initiatives on Open Data, and more generally on use and re-use of data, made feasible by the adoption of open and linked data standards, and new services which can be developed as more data becomes available.
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