OSGi Alliance 2005 Developer Forum and World Congress
SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 8, 2005--

Draft of Enhanced Specification for Managed Services Delivery Now Publicly Available on the OSGi Alliance Website

San Ramon, California, USA – June 27, 2005 - The OSGi(TM) Alliance will -- for the first time ever -- publish a sneak preview of an OSGi Service Platform specification. This core Release 4 specification will serve as a base for new mobility services for mobile phones, cars, portable devices, and other environments. Another major innovation of this release adds powerful new modularization capabilities to Java(TM). The sneak preview will be posted today on the OSGi Alliance website -- www.osgi.org. Release 4 of the OSGi Service Platform (R4) is the foundation of an enhanced service oriented architecture for the delivery of managed services to devices in multiple environments, and will drive the development of many new standards-based, service-oriented capabilities in the industry. It enables considerable cost savings during the development and operation of networked devices.

"We are pleased to present an early access draft of the OSGi Service Platform Release 4 Core Specification on our website," said Dr. Susan Schwarze, VP Marketing OSGi Alliance and Marketing Director ProSyst Software. "This will allow public review of the successful work that has been carried out by the many experts and authorities available to the OSGi Alliance through membership and collaboration with other consortia. Final release of these specifications is planned for the OSGi Alliance 2005 Developer Forum and World Congress in Paris, France, October 11-14. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from experts how to develop products using Release 4, and gain an understanding of its business value to the mobile, telematics, digital home and other industry ecosystems."

Using the OSGi Service Platform in a networked device, also adds the capability to securely manage the life cycle of the software services in the device from anywhere in the network. Software services can be installed, updated, or removed in a controlled manner without having to disrupt the operation of the device.

A unique aspect of the OSGi Service Platform is that its advanced service-oriented component model enables networked services to dynamically discover other services and work together to achieve the desired functionality. Other groups and consortia, such as the Eclipse Foundation, the Java Community Process (JCP), the ERTICO GST project, and others, have worked with the OSGi Alliance to define open service specifications that address common industry needs in an open, non-proprietary way.

The OSGi platform now adds powerful new modularization capabilities to Java. It provides enhanced encapsulation of networked services that can share a single VM. One key advantage of the enhancements is that the OSGi Service Platform is now applicable in many more architectures. Proof of this can be found in the use of this new OSGi technology in the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) runtime environment.

Improvements include:

-- Modularized class sharing and hiding of implementation details;

-- Advanced handling of multiple versions of the same classes so that old and new applications can execute within the same VM;

-- Localization of OSGi bundle manifests so that services can be deployed anywhere;

-- Enhancements in security and policies.

Security handling has been significantly expanded over an already rich set of capabilities. The new Conditional Permission Admin service provides an elegant and simple way to manage networked services securely. It also supports dynamic policies that can depend on external (custom) conditions. Combined with R4 support for digital signatures, this provides a one stop security solution to large deployments of products using the OSGi Service Platform.

Another very innovative addition is the Declarative Services specification. It eliminates memory footprint issues that can prevent small embedded devices from using a service oriented architecture to support multiple applications. Additionally, it significantly simplifies the service-oriented programming model by declaratively handling the dynamics of services.

The updated OSGi Service Platform now supports a number of additional use cases. However, all new improvements are backwards compatible to Release 3; no changes are required for existing OSGi bundles, applications, or services.

It is anticipated that in addition to the deployments in automotive/telematics market and the digital home market products, the first mobile phones incorporating Release 4 technology will be available in the market in 2006. The OSGi Alliance anticipates formally approving and publishing the Release 4 core specifications in early October, and the OSGi Compliance Program will soon follow with its certification process for Release 4 compliant implementations. This compliance program will help assure that products and services from multiple suppliers incorporating Release 4 will interoperate with each other over a variety of networking systems, thus, generating new business opportunities for operators and service aggregators.

OSGi Alliance 2005 Developer Forum and World Congress in October in Paris

The fourth annual OSGi Alliance Developer Forum and World Congress will be held October 11-14, 2005 in Paris, France. Application developers, service aggregators, hardware platform providers, and consumer electronics, automotive manufacturers, and many others will discuss the latest product developments and deployments. This will provide an excellent opportunity for developers to network with the OSGi community, learn about the new R4 core specification and learn how to develop their own OSGi based products. For registration information, go to www.osgicongress.com.

About the OSGi Alliance

The OSGi Alliance and its members specify, create, advance, and promote wide industry adoption of an open delivery and management platform for application services in home, commercial buildings, automotive and industrial environments. The OSGi Alliance serves as the focal point for a collaborative ecosystem of service providers, developers, manufacturers, and consumers. The OSGi specifications define a standardized, component oriented, computing environment for networked services. OSGi technology is currently being delivered in products and services shipping from several Fortune Global 100 companies. The OSGi Alliance's horizontal software integration platform is ideal for both vertical and cross-industry business models within home, vehicle, mobile and industrial environments. As an independent non-profit corporation, the OSGi Alliance also provides for the fair and uniform creation and distribution of relevant intellectual property -- including specifications, reference implementations, and test suites -- to all its members. http://www.osgi.org 

OSGi is a trademark of the OSGi Alliance, Inc. in the United States and worldwide. Java and all Java based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and worldwide. All company, brand and product names may be trademarks that are the sole property of their respective owners. All Rights Reserved.