OSGi Gains Steam

Some 200 industry professionals attended the member meeting for the Open Services Gateway Initiative, held Feb. 27-March 1 in Dallas. It was the first event in which the usually-quiet OSGi invited analysts and select members of the press. The group, which defines and promotes open specifications for the delivery of services into the home, had plenty to show off during the meeting.

For starters, OSGi now boasts at least five companies who offer software-developers kits for manufacturers and service providers interested in the OSGi platform: Sun Microsystems, GateSpace,

IBM, ProSyst, and Acronet.

Version 1.0 of the OSGi spec was released last May, and the organization hopes to release 2.0 this year.

Unlike the other so-called home-networking standards, OSGi has no direct "competitor" in its space--which occupies the gateway area between the in-home networking and control platforms (UPnP, Jini, HomeRF and Ethernet, for example) and the external service providers (utilities, cable companies and ISPs, for example).

Manufacturers and service providers on both sides of the gateway are eagerly anticipating OSGI’s mass deployment.

On the service side, both Verizon and BellSouth affirmed their reliance on OSGi to deliver more than just telephone and broadband access to the home, but not until there’s standards like OSGi in place. An OSGi gateway will be the critical link between BellSouth’s DigitalPassport services, and the device within a home. "We have to extend our network out to the end appliance, or you’ll never be able to support it [the network]," says BellSouth’s Al Hicks.

Inside the home, everyone from chip-makers to gateway developers to appliance manufacturers are banking on OSGi. Whirlpool plans to release Internet-linked white goods that will connect to outside services via OSGi; Echelon plans to tie its energy-management and other home-control applications to OSGi-compliant services; and companies like Broadband Gateways will build the actual boxes that contain OSGi chips.

Even home systems installer should care about OSGi, which provides the means for virtually anyone to get into the recurring-revenue business, according to Raj Mata, senior product manager for Sun Microsystems, and vice president of marketing for OSGI. Companies like ADT could use their (OSGi-compliant) communications hubs to do more than just monitor security--they could deliver Internet- or utility-related services as well. Conversely, they could wait until other service providers take their security business away. Mata warns: "They have the choice of being the service provider or letting someone else invade their turf."