Enterprise Market

OSGi is well-rooted in the Enterprise market. Most of the leading Enterprise Java software vendors, including IBM, Oracle, Progress, SAP, SoftwareAG, RedHat, VMware and others, actively support and have made significant investments in the technology as full members of the OSGi Alliance. OSGi technology has also been widely embraced by Open Source Enterprise projects within the Apache and Eclipse communities and beyond.

This activity has led to an increasing number of developers and end-user organizations initially experimenting and now actively adopting OSGi within their enterprise applications. Adoption in the application layer looks set to steadily increase over the coming months and years as Enterprise organizations begin to experience the significant cost saving, agility and competitive benefits that OSGi technology can deliver to their IT teams and, ultimately, their businesses.

OSGi technology was adopted by Eclipse in 2004 with its 3.0 release and today OSGi has been also been adopted by NetBeans and IntelliJ.

In 2007, an Enterprise Expert Group (EEG) was established within the OSGi Alliance and the first Enterprise specification of OSGi technology for enterprise application and application server developers was released in March 2010 [Download Here]. A summary presentation of the Enterprise specification contents is available from the Co-Chair of the EEG here

A list of the available OSGi Specification Implementations is available on wikipedia.

This comprehensive specification enables Enterprise organizations to take advantage of OSGi in their environments today. The Enterprise Expert Group is already hard at work on the next release of Enterprise specifications, which will include areas such as Cloud and OSGi, OSGi Bundle Repository (OBR), JCA, Bytecode Weaving, Annotation Processing, Asynchronous Services, and more.

If you would like to get involved, the Enterprise Expert Group would welcome input from everyone, especially Enterprise organizations that are using or interested in using OSGi within their environments. To find out more about how you can get involved, please contact us by .

Use Cases

BEA - BEA has been a leader in bringing the benefits of the OSGi Service Platform to enterprise solutions. As the foundation of BEA’s microService Architecture (mSA) architecture, OSGi technology has reduced the cost and time-to-market of innovative products. BEA’s mSA applies the fundamentals of service oriented architecture to enterprise applications. BEA uses OSGi technology to build lightweight component-based solutions that re-use BEA’s rock-solid technology, complemented by open source and third-party components. The OSGi backplane provides a robust, rapid deployment mechanism.

Built on mSA, BEA WebLogic® Event Server 2.0 is a lightweight Java application server for high performance, event-driven applications. It provides the ability to process high volume, complex event streams in real time to identify business opportunities and threats. BEA WebLogic Event Server leverages mSA and OSGi technology to provide best of breed technology, including a real-time kernel, complex event processing engine, event-based programming model, and container services.

CAS PIA - CAS Software AG develops CRM software specifically targeted for the SME (small medium enterprise) sector. Their new product CAS PIA is a Web-based CRM application offered as a SaaS (software as a service) solution. CAS PIA is based on server-side OSGi technology which enables CAS to build highly modularized applications that consist of multiple bundles each encapsulating a specific business case. Therefore, CAS PIA is not only a full-featured CRM application but also comes with a platform, CAS Open, that can be easily adopted by partners to build new applications for vertical solutions (e.g. for car dealers, lawyers, etc.). OSGi technology enforces a clean architecture with hundreds of loosely coupled bundles each adding some new functionality to the system (e.g. a campaign module or e-mail support). Several extension points (e.g. OSGi services) allow partners to customize or extend the application for their needs. CAS Open is based on Equinox as OSGi implementation and uses Eclipse RAP as web framework. CAS also offers a SDK to support developers to extend and leverage the benefits of the CAS Open platform.

Cisco - Makewave's OSGi Service Platform-based technology is deployed in the CiscoWorks 2000 Service Management Solution. The CiscoWorks 2000 Service Management Solution manages service levels between enterprises and internal or external service providers to ensure quality-of-service. Gatespace Telematics Distributed Service Platform (GDSP) provides the Service Level Manager (SLM) Collection Manager, a component of the Service Management Solution, with remote management functionality enabling dynamic deployment and life-cycle management of Cisco's Java-based control agents.

FUSE ESB 4 - (www.fusesource.com) FUSE ESB 4 is an open source ESB that includes a complete OSGi framework and is based on Apache ServiceMix 4. The FUSE team, many of whom are project leaders and key committers at Apache, productize and fully support FUSE ESB 4. FUSE ESB 4 supports OSGi as well as other integration standards in a single platform, making it easy for developers to implement the integration patterns they need with the programming model of their choice.

FUSE ESB 4 includes:

Normalized message router – a standard way for components to plug in and talk to the ESB, supporting multiple programming models
OSGi framework – a faster and standard way to create, deploy, and easily provision integration components as modules
Native Spring support – enables Spring users to quickly create components using Spring XML
FUSE Integration Designer (http://fusesource.com/products/fuse-integration-designer) – graphical user interface to integrate systems using Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIPs)

IBM - (www.ibm.com) IBM has long used OSGi technology to benefit many of its products including WebSphere Application Server. Recently, IBM made available a new feature pack for it's WebSphere Application Server providing enterprise developers access to OSGi capabilities leveraging the OSGi Service Platform Release 4 Version 4.2 set of specifications to provide integration between OSGi capabilities and Java EE.

WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for OSGi Applications and Java Persistence API 2.0 (JPA 2.0)
The feature pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2.0 delivers a pre-integrated application framework to help increase developer productivity and time to value. Through this feature pack, organizations can realize many of the benefits found in other non-standard open source frameworks in a standardized, WebSphere Application Server integrated fashion. Specifically, the feature pack delivers open community and standards-based implementations of the OSGi Blueprint Container specification and Java EE 6 JPA 2.0 along with the ability, optionally, to assemble, deploy, and manage applications as a collection of versioned OSGi bundles. Common Web application requirements for modular design, simple POJO-based components and efficient data access can be addressed by using both the OSGi applications and JPA 2.0 components of this feature pack together. Alternatively, for greatest flexibility, the two features may be installed and used independently. (Read more)

Makewave - (www.makewave.com) Designed for service provisioning, and remote management and administration of multi-service platforms, Ubicore is the center of control in a service oriented architecture. It includes the necessary components for life-cycle management of services, administration of users, as well as remotely handling platform configuration and platform management. The ability to swiftly provision, configure and operate services running on any platform in a managed network is the key to success for any network operator, automotive OEM, residential gateway operator, fleet management company or other equipment owner or device manufacturer. Built on the open-standards from OSGi, Java and OMA, Ubicore provides a future-proof system for provisioning services today, while keeping O&M costs to a minimum as new services are deployed in the future.

Paremus - (www.paremus.com) The Paremus Service Fabric and Nimble products are built upon OSGi technology. Nimble makes working with OSGi easy and is an OSGi™ framework and Operating System independent shell, scripting environment, dependency resolver and provisioner freely available for download. The Paremus Service Fabric is where OSGi meets Cloud, offering a model-driven, robust, self-healing, self-scaling PaaS for composite applications.

ProSyst Software - (www.prosyst.com) ProSyst Software's OSGi-based product family includes the mPower Remote Manager (mPRM). This backend enterprise software is a powerful and flexible remote management platform which allows to administer thousands or even millions of devices from a single management domain. mPower Remote Manager is built on the open-standards from Java, OSGi and OMA specifications to help device manufacturers or service providers to simplify the management of a wide range of OSGi and non-OSGi end-user devices. The devices covered include mobile devices, desktop clients, automotive telematics systems, and home service gateway boxes. This allows dynamic injection of new applications, system extension libraries and services behind the scenes while the devices continue to function. The features of mPRM include:

Delivery services and apps on demand (user pull, provider push)
Install, Update on the fly, Remove, Re-install them
Monitoring & access software inventory
Starting, Stopping & Disabling
Managing Privileges and Access Rights
Rich Management and monitoring capability
Based on a modular component architecture it is easy to integrate with existing 3rd party enterprise systems like databases, CRM systems, Java application servers, etc. mPRM is already deployed in solutions from Fortune 100 companies, including service providers and telecom operators.

Ricoh Company Ltd - (www.ricoh.com) is an early adopter of Java™ technology and is using Makewave's OSGi distribution Knopflerfish Pro as a single OSGi key component in Ricoh's Embedded Software Architecture™ (ESA) device platform. Ricoh have launched Knopflerfish OSGi distribution in the new high-end products such as Multi-functional Products (MFPs) and laser printers. Knopflerfish brings the dynamic revolutions into the current office environment and support a large range applications and solutions depending on individual client job requirements. Knopflerfish makes it possible for Ricoh, Ricoh's customers and third party developers to add and upgrade new functions during runtime and to deliver unique "aftermarket" solution.

Siemens Communications Inc. - (www.siemens.com) Siemens Communications Inc. expanded its leadership role in enterprise communications by providing development-friendly, business-focused communication applications across a framework of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) standards and associated Web services interfaces based on OSGi technology. The Siemens® Communications SOA initiative, which began in 2004, is planned to ultimately encompass all key Siemens enterprise innovations and services - including past and future communication solutions -- to help maximize the use of reusable communication components with any network or business. Enterprise customers, for example, are utilizing Siemens' SOA-built HiPath® OpenScape™ Software Developer Kit (SDK), which exposes the underlying functions of the HiPath OpenScape solution's presence-smart features and helps to allow developers to easily embed these features directly into enterprise applications.