I'd like to start by welcoming Infosys, Rebaze, Serli and Telecom Italia as our latest Alliance members. Given the increasing level of dialogue between the Alliance and software vendors and end-user organizations, we expect this trend will continue with new organizations joining the OSGi Alliance early in 2013.

Looking back at 2012, one of the most dramatic growth areas has been OSGi on the "edge." Whether home gateways, smart grid solutions or the industrial monitoring of turbines, wind-farms and the like, OSGi is increasingly being adopted by diverse industries and organizations. OSGi is the only industry standard for software modularity and so is the only industry standard approach for ensuring that your edge solutions, whatever they may be, are cost-effectively maintainable. The Alliance Residential Expert Group is working with a number of other industry standard bodies to ensure a coherent and open specification for this increasingly important market.

Enterprise adoption of OSGi also continues apace. For example, the Eclipse Community Survey for 2012 (http://slidesha.re/YpyaiJ slide 13) indicates that from a developer perspective, OSGi is the only "framework" technology that has experienced significant growth over the last two years. If the trend continues, OSGi usage will surpass that of Spring and JEE in the Eclipse Community. If we also consider the fact that most JEE applications servers are already built upon OSGi, we can see that the enterprise shift to OSGi is well under way.

For any technology, the earlier adopter community is vital. Earlier adopters light the way and remove some of the bumps from the road for those who follow. During the OSGi DevCon and OSGi Community Events last year I had the opportunity to hear how you were using OSGi and some of the things that could be done to make life easier. The ongoing importance of tooling, best practices, and quality of third-party libraries were discussed during the OSGi Birds-of-a-Feather session in Stuttgart and, as a result of those discussions, a number of us have pulled together to address them using the OSGi Community site as the focal point for activities (see http://wiki.osgi.org/wiki/Community_Activity). These are volunteer efforts so if you have the time, please get involved, you'll be very welcome.

From a specifications perspective, the Alliance has released a number of important works this year. We all have our own perspectives, but for me the new R5 resolver and the Data Transfer Object (DTO) specifications are perhaps the most interesting. Details of all the specification activities are covered elsewhere in this newsletter. During 2013 the expert groups will continue with a number of important specification activities including Device Abstraction Layer (REG), Cloud EcoSystems and REST specifications (Enterprise Expert Group), with Universal OSGi specification working starting by the Core Platform Expert Group (CPEG). We'll have more on this exciting development early next year.

If you are interested in joining the Alliance and contributing to some of the areas we'll be working in this year, drop Patrick Lancaster an email and he will efficiently navigate you through the membership process.

In the meantime, I'd like to wish you all the very best for 2013.

Yours,
Richard Nicholson
President,
OSGi Alliance

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OSGi DEVCON 2013 REGISTRATION OPEN

We are pleased to announce that OSGi DevCon 2013 is scheduled for March 25-28 in Boston. Building on the success of the last few years, the conference is once again co-located with EclipseCon and is one of the highlights of the year for the OSGi Community and anyone using or interested in OSGi.

Over the four-day event we will have 17 talks, two tutorials, an evening BOF and a workshop, plus plenty of time to network with your peers and to meet many of the leading OSGi luminaries and advocates from around the world. The content will include case studies, specification updates and plans, along with some best practices and how-to guides.

With a new ticket price structure in place for 2013 it's an even better value. The rates are $900 for OSGi members and $1,000 for non-members until Feb. 15 when it increases to $1,000 for members and$1,200 for non-members. So it really does make sense to book early, and now the program is announced, what's stopping you?

The Selection Committee has completed the difficult task of selecting the program from a large number of high-quality submissions. The Program Committee appreciates everyone who took the time to make a submission and we are sorry that there aren't enough slots for every presentation.

Full details of the program, the OSGi member discount code, how to register for the conference and how to book accommodation can be found on the OSGi DevCon 2013 homepage. If you have any questions you can reach the Program Committee by email.

We hope to see you in Boston!

BJ Hargrave and Mike Francis
OSGi DevCon 2013 Program Committee

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Enterprise Expert Group

After finalizing the Enterprise R5 release, the Enterprise Expert Group has started working on specifications for the R6 release. The current main themes are Cloud and Java EE integration. In the context of Cloud, the group is working on a REST API, as well as an OSGi Cloud PaaS definition. In the JavaEE context, the focus is on CDI and EJB integration. Additionally, a number of existing specifications are being upgraded and expanded. The tentative release date for Enterprise R6 is in the first half of 2014.

Residential Expert Group

OSGi is gaining more and more momentum in home gateways. The Residential Expert Group is happy to welcome France Telecom and Telecom Italia as new Alliance members, and Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia and Cisco presented their OSGi based solutions at the OSGi Community Event in Ludwigsburg.

The REG finalized the collection of requirements for RFP 142 - ZigBee API, RFP 147 - Device Abstraction Layer, and RFP -149 USB Device Category. On Oct. 22, the REG organized a workshop with other standardization bodies, hosted by NEC Laboratories Europe, in Heidelberg to synchronize requirements and planned activities between those organizations. Broadband Forum, HGI, CENELEC, DECT ULE, and ETSI M2M were among the participants.

Additionally, REG started to work on new requirements documents for Resource Management Use Cases and Requirements, Network Interface Information Service and an EnOcean API.

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The Marketing Committee's goal for 2012 was to increase awareness of the Alliance and its technology and to promote an increase in membership.

• In addition to the engagement with user groups and a good presence at selected events, we finished the revision of the website architecture and fine-tuned the messaging. The second half of 2012 was largely dedicated to the OSGi Community Event, its selection of presentations and the activities that increased the awareness of our OSGi Community Event, co-located with EclipseCon Europe.
• The OSGi Community Event 2012 with its BoF was a great success. We had up to 80 attendees for some speeches and the OSGi keynote by John Duimovich from IBM showed how well OSGi technology is known and deployed. Regarding deployments, it was great to see that business deployments, such as the QIVICON solution from Deutsche Telekom or Cisco's product solution, not only show the benefits of OSGi technology, but also create a bigger market for all. The technical presentations got good feedback, too, and ranged from enterprise, cloud and embedded topics to native OSGi. The attentive audience and the BoF showed the high interest in the various topics and the increasing engagement for OSGi-based solutions. The Alliance's next steps will be to build up on this momentum and use the information and engagement for technical use cases, success stories and additional product spotlights. Please contact Alisa Pfeil or Susan Schwarze to inquire or participate in a success story or product spotlight. If you are interested in getting involved in the OSGiDevCon 2013 please have a look at http://www.osgi.org/DevCon2013/HomePage and let us know.

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OSGi PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

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