ObjectWeb Best Use Cases Awards

ObjectWeb launched the Awards for the Best Use Cases designation to be profiled at the 2006 ObjectWeb Annual Conference.

The OWCon06 Best Use Cases Contest is a challenge that allows any professional to file one or several submissions about real world use cases of ObjectWeb components and platforms. Then the ObjectWeb members will vote fore the best use case on the following categories:

• Enterprise Java: production use of ObjectWeb enterprise Java components and platforms
• ISV & Integration: commercial offering or development embedding some ObjectWeb components
• Jury's Special Prize: any use of ObjectWeb components and platforms

Make sure to let people know of your best use cases of ObjectWeb middleware!

ObjectWeb RFID Workshop, Middleware Conference

There is an ObjectWeb workshop today, at the Middleware 2005 Conference, about FRID. David Li (board member of OW representing individual members) presents a case for an ObjectWeb RFID Initiative.

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) are small tags able to transmit unique ID through radio. They are expected to replace Bar Codes in the 10 years to come. Mandates from Wal-Mart, DOD, Target, Metro is a driver for adoption of RFID and next wave of IT business. A RFID can be attached to virtually anything, including human beings. Nokia recently introduced the RFID scanner cell phone. An application may be buying goods in vending machines while having their price imputed directly on your phone bill.

A vision of the future of RFID is an "Internet of Things"; tags everywhere, readers everywhere. It would be necessary to leverage the Internet to carry data. Current RFID tags (namely the EPC class of tags) have limited capacity of 96/128 bits to store their (unique) id. Providing a network infrastructure falls into the scope of ObjectWeb.

Exemples of applications include tags on boxes, tags in passports, fight against counterfeit drugs, livestock, pets, kids... Sounds to me that nobody wonders whether this future would be a Brave New World or just... hell.

Gartner's Hype Curve analysis puts RFID Peak of Inflated Expectations in 2004, Trough of Desillusionment in 2006 and Plateau of Productivity in 2018. Market size in 2008 is expected to be around $6.5 billion. The big players are the usual suspects: IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, BEA and RadioActive & FirstOpen in open source. In the Java space, two JSRs have been proposed by Nokia about the reader interface.

In the architecture, data filter and transport is an important aspect, because unlike bar codes, RFIDs are constantly on and the readers keep reading information. This is somewhat similar to what happens with mobile (cell) phones. Management of RFID infrastructure extends beyond managing the reader. For instance, it would also include management of sensors to detect moting of packs/trucks transporting the goods. The information network is necessary to share information in and between organizations.

EPCGlobal is leading the current specifications. It's mainly a hardware specification, American centric (generation 1 uses 900MHz). It is infested with patents (over 250). EPC Global IS 1.0 was published in Sept 2005. It's a land of proprietary systems (IBM, Sun, SAP, offer full infrastructure). Several countries develop their own specifications: Japan UID, China RFID Group, etc. Software standards are to be developped.

Today, Wal-Mart/DoD top 100 suppliers are shipping boxes and pallets tagged with RFID. RFID is not integrated into production. Data is transported over emails. So far, we're only talking of limited pilot projects. Yet, VCs already invested $1 billion.

Several ObjectWeb projects are available that would make sense in a software infrastructure for RFID: SensorBean, OSCAR: Reader Interface; Sensor Bean: reader management; JORAM, ProActive, XQuare, OCtopus, C-JDBC: Data Filtering, transport; JOnAS, Celtix, Petals: Data Request/Legacy System Support; SNAP, ProActive: RFID Information Network.

Some countries (China to begin with) already work on a counter proposal to EPC Global's ONS. ONS is based on DNS. The problems are: it's centralized administration and control; it's controlled by the US alone; it relies on 40 year old architectures. This is an opportunity for research in Grid data and overlay network.

The goal of a RFID initiative at ObjectWeb would be to reuse existing components, attract new partners, foster OS/Standard organization cooperation and eventually start an ecosystem in this field. EPC ALE/IS is the only emerging standard in the RFID middleware area, with certification/test suite not available till Q206. The ObjectWeb board accepted the proposal for starting a new initiative in October 2005. Initial participants may include: FirstOpen, GMRC, Macnica, ScalAgent, SensorBea, Yangfan Soft. Tangfan is one of the 54 members in the Chinese RFID standard workgroup under Chinese Ministry of Information Industry.

The Clueless Manifesto

Talked with Cedric a couple of days ago and he mentioned the Cluetrain Manifesto (the book actually). Tonight I browsed it while having dinner alone here in Brussels, in a nice Asian cuisine restaurant named Citizen. And because I read it, I will not recommend reading it to anyone, and won't comment on it either. Those curious to know why may drop me an email.

Commissioner Reding about Internet Governance

The World Summit on the Information Society is opening today in Tunis, Tunisia, and voices in the press comment the opportunity to hold such a summit in a country that has a mixed track record about freedom of speech. It's amazing how in mainstream media the Internet equals freedom of speech, and this is great, and this freedom is every day increasingly threatened, not only by rogue governments but also by laws ellaborated in democratic countries. But this is a long and controversial story, and this post is not intended to be a flame bait.

EU Commissioner Viviane Reding published a paper in the Wall Street Journal today about Internet governance, and more specifically, in favor of privatization on ICANN, the organism in charge of domain name allocation. Mrs Reding expresses that there is "no substantive difference of views" between the EU and the US in favor of a free, stable and democratic Internet. Mrs Reding is not in favor of "fixing what's not broke" nor of calling in the U.N. Her point rather is to advocate in favor of a multilateral cooperation model where governments would directly participate in an a governmental advisory committee, building upon the existing ICANN.

Talk at Upcoming Sou+Java Conference

I'll deliver a talk on Monday (November 21, 2005) at Sou+Java International Developer Conference in São Paulo, Brazil:

Focus on Middleware: how Companies can take control of their infrastructure

Middleware is the new frontier for open source and brings opportunities to contain costs, to focus on innovative engineering, to find new sources of revenue and to go to market with unique competitive advantages. With members in about 80 countries and hundreds of committers, ObjectWeb is a fast-growing, nonprofit organization that focuses on high-quality open source middleware. For example, JOnAS from ObjectWeb was the first open source application server developed in a nonprofit way to achieve J2EE certification. The benefits of open standard compliant, production-grade middleware is made available to everyone as an alternative, or as a complement, to proprietary solutions.

In this presentation, you’ll learn how ObjectWeb succeeds in creating a business ecosystem that is a land of opportunities for all open-source players from research labs to innovative SMEs, from global companies to governmental organizations.

ObjectWeb / Orientware Agreement

Today in Shanghai, ObjectWeb and Orientware signed a MoU to promote the adoption of open-source middleware worldwide.

Orientware has given very few online signs of life so far. In the issue #414 of the Chinese Science and Technology Newsletter, it is described as "a proprietary mediumware product developed by Chinese software makers". Mediumware here stands for middleware, which maybe sounded too much like "software from the middle empire", unless it is intended to mean software for psychics...

The truth is elsewhere - Orientware is an organization that integrates the results achieved by the Program 863 in the domain of middleware by universities and institutes such as Beihang University, Peking University, the Institute of software for Chinese Science Academie and National University of Defense Technology etc. Orientware code base is a collaborative composition of various middleware platforms, such as CORBA, J2EE, TP monitor, portal and workflow built on open and standard technical specifications. The goal is to provide a comprehensive middleware platform for the Chinese national information infrastructure that could challenge its foreign counterparties with respect to performance and functionality.

In the short term, the collaboration will be kicked off by a cross membership between ObjectWeb and Orientware. Expert groups will be created. Orientware is to release parts of its proprietary code base in open source. After assessment, some of these projects may become ObjectWeb projects.

For ObjectWeb, this is a tremendous recognition of its position as the home ground for open source middleware players. This agreement is expected to foster dissemination and adoption of ObjectWeb technologies is Asia. For Orientware, the benefits lie in the opportunities to collaborate with European research centers, to contribute to adoption of standards and to gain credibility on the IT market. It's also a sign that the Chinese government is supportive of open source and may specifically target development of OSS in the next 5-years program.

SpagoBI -- First Open Source Unified BI Platform

ObjectWeb member Engineering contributed the SpagoBI platform to ObjectWeb. SpagoBI is a unified business intelligence platform (Business intelligence software enables executives to make better decisions by efficiently accessing and analyzing business data -- for example data coming from production, marketing, finance, HR or sales departments).

It makes it possible to get a synthetic view over data aggregated from many different relational databases and data stores, using models and analytical tools (e.g.: reports, queries and dashboards) including the chance to integrate analytical services of proprietary products such as Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion or equivalents.

A typical example is the case of companies A and B merging. Company A uses Business Objects, whereas company B runs Hyperion. SpagoBI provides a platform to swiftly create new reports to the CEO that aggregate data from the two merging companies without having to modify the legacy systems. The ability to address such business needs is important to a systems integrator such as Engineering. This is the reason why Engineering decided to lead the SpagoBI project. Putting it under ObjectWeb’s umbrella is a way to ensure sustainability and adoption to the project, hence securing a market for professional services that would leverage SpagoBI.

SpagoBI offers the following classes of business intelligence features: data mining, QBE (query by example), OLAP (online analytical processing on dimensional analysis), reporting and dashboards. These features are all accessible in an Intranet mode, using thin web clients. SpagoBI does not reinvent the wheel - it leverages existing open source projects such as JasperReports, Lucene, OpenLaslo, etc)

SpagoBI also comes as a complement of other ObjectWeb projects (eXo Platform as a portal engine, JOnAS as a J2EE appserver, etc). With SpagoBI, the ObjectWeb middleware stack achieves a yet higher level of functionality and stands the comparison with leading proprietary solutions.

Associated with ObjectWeb workflow engines such as Bonita or Shark, SpagoBI may provide BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) features. In a nutshell, the idea is to let SpagoBI generate activity reports based on the logs that come from the workflow engines.

BYOC - Build Your Own Community

On Sept 14, 2005, I blogged about an emerging OSS business pattern. The news today illustrate this pattern in the ObjectWeb sphere of influence.

Peter Sayer wrote about Continuent in ComputerWorld today. Continuent is the new name of EMIC Networks, a Finnish member of ObjectWeb. EMIC also started a small OSS portal under the same name of Continuent.

As expected in the pattern described in my previous post, EMIC sought venture capital (they are reaching step 4 of the pattern I proposed).

EMIC decided to host some of their projects licensed in BSD on a portal of their own, other LPGL'ed projects remaining on ObjectWeb (C-JDBC to begin with). This choice may dilute the efforts to some extent and be prjudicial to their own business in the long run. Building your own community is not that simple, and the pattern would probably better work if they decided to propose their projects to the ObjectWeb consortium.