Service Fabric blog

Washington Warblings

Mar 27

Posted by Mike Francis in Bndtools, Dev Tooling, EclipseCon, OSGi DevCon, Paremus | No Comments

OSGi DevCon 2012 is underway. The first day of the conference was all tutorial based and Neil Bartlett (aided by Gustavo Morozowski and Peter Kriens) gave a tutorial on “Mastering OSGi with Ease” to a packed room of 80 or so conference attendees.

Neil was also short listed for Bndtools in the Best Developer Tool category at EclipseCon. Unfortunately he wasnt the overall winner, with the award going to the more than worthy Chronon Debugger, however making the final three from a submission list of 48 is a indication of the importance of Bndtools – well done Neil (and the other Bndtools contributors).

Day 2 of the conference is just starting and there are plenty of OSGi talks and presentations along with the OSGi BOF this evening. For those of you who arent able to make it to Reston this evening for the BOF at 7pm the OSGi Alliance will be providing a live video and audio stream of the BOF via Ustream. You will be able to access this from the OSGi Channel here. We hope to be able to take questions from remote attendees via Twitter using #osgibof.

The line up for talks today is as follows:

10.30 – 11.15 Moving the Guidewire platform to OSGi Paul D’Albora [Guidewire Software]

11.15 – 12.00 What’s new in the OSGi Enterprise Release 5.0

David Bosschaert [Red Hat], Tim Diekmann [TIBCO Software Inc.]

13.30 – 14-15 Liberate your components with OSGi services Alasdair Nottingham [IBM]

15.00 – 15.45 Smart Home Mashups: A New Application Opportunity Walt Bowers [Hitachi CTA]

17.00 – 17.50 Micro Services in JavaScript Simon Kaegi [IBM]

Then there will be the BOF at 19.00 with four more talks. Dont forget if you are in the Reston area the BOF is free and open for non-conference delegates too, and if you cant make it to Reston there will be a live video and audio stream. The BOF is being held in Reston Suites B.

If you are able to make it in person you will get the chance to enter a free prize draw to win a copy of:

OSGi in Action (Manning)
OSGi in Depth (Manning)
Java Application Architecture: Modularity Patterns with Examples Using OSGi (Prentice Hall)

The line up for the BOF is:

Java 8 Modules, OSGi and Jigsaw – Neil Bartlett [Paremus]
Subsystems: For those occasions where bundles are just too small… – Tom Watson [IBM]
How to simplify OSGi development using OBR – Peter Kriens [OSGi Alliance]
A surprise special session

Hope to see you at OSGi DevCon 2012.

OSGi DevCon 2012 – 26 to 29 March

Feb 23

Posted by Mike Francis in Cloud, EclipseCon, OSGi DevCon, Paremus, RFP133 | No Comments

Read on to find out how you can get a $100 discount off our OSGi Training

OSGi DevCon 2012 is almost upon us. Its being run in conjunction with EclipseCon again, however this year it is being held in Reston, Virginia instead of the traditional West Coast location.

As you would expect there is plenty of OSGi activity going on at the conference including an OSGi Tutorial by Neil Bartlett and Gustavo Morozowski from Paremus called Mastering OSGi with Ease. Richard Nicholson will also be giving a presentation on Cloud & OSGi – Looking Beyond the Virtual Machine which will include a demonstration of the Service Fabric.

The full list of the main conference OSGi DevCon talks and tutorials can be found on the EclipseCon website. Be sure to regsiter in advance to take advantage of the best prices for attending the conference, plus if you are an OSGi Alliance Member there is a $250 discount available. Please see the OSGi Alliance DevCon homepage for details.

This isn’t all that’s happening though. There is also a free OSGi BOF and free OSGi Cloud Workshop, both of which are open to all.

OSGi BOF

The OSGi Alliance is hosting an OSGi BOF on the evening of Tuesday 27 March from 19,00hrs. This is open to all, OSGi DevCon / EclipseCon conference attendees and non-conference attendees. The OSGi Users’ Forum DC Metro will be joining the session. The BOF will be held at the in the Reston Suites B room at the Hyatt Regency Reston [Map] conference hotel. There is no need to register so please just come along on the evening.

Topics for the BOF include:

Java 8 Modules, OSGi and Jigsaw
Subsystems: For those occasions where bundles are just too small…
How to simplify OSGi development using OBR
A surprise special session

OSGi Cloud Workshop

The OSGi Alliance will also be holding its second Cloud Workshop on Thursday 29 March between 09.00hrs and 13.00hrs. This too is open to both main conference and non-conference attendees. Places are strictly limited for the Cloud Workshop and if you want to attend please Register Here. This workshop is a follow up to the workshop that took place at OSGi DevCon 2010 which led to the creation of RFP133 and anyone planning on attending is encouraged to review this RFP in advance.

There will be lots of Paremus staff at the conference and OSGi events so be sure to grab us to say hi.

And if you are local to the area….or just interested in saving $100 off OSGi Training

Don’t forget we are holding a 4 day OSGi Training course in Herndon, VA between 4 to 7 June, 2012. If you catch one of the Paremus team at the conference we will be pleased to give you a special coupon code that provides a $100 discount off the early bird price.

Hope to see you in Reston next month.

OSGi DevCon 2012 – Call For Papers Deadline Approaching

Oct 15

Posted by Mike Francis in OSGi, OSGi DevCon | No Comments

OSGi DevCon 2012 was announced last month and is taking place March 26 to 29 next year. Its being run in conjunction with EclipseCon again, however in a break from tradition this year, its being held at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia rather than Silicon Valley.

If you plan on submitting a talk then dont delay as you only have just over a month left. The submission deadline is November 11, 2011.

Dont forget to tag your proposal as “OSGi DevCon” to make sure that it gets reviewed by the OSGi DevCon Program Committee. For full details on how to make a submission please take a look at the conference web site.

This is the biggest OSGi conference of the year with sessions for all levels. If you are using, exploring or just interested in finding out more about OSGi then be sure to put the dates in your diary and make plans to attend. There will be plenty of opportunity to meet with the experts, network with your peers and get the low down on the latest additions to the OSGi specifications.

Coming In From The Cold – JavaOne

Oct 9

Posted by Mike Francis in Cloud, Distributed OSGi, JavaOne, Model Driven, OSGi, PaaS, Paremus | No Comments

Seems like JavaOne was put firmly back on track this week. Great news after last years apparent discontent of it playing second fiddle to Oracle OpenWorld. Congrats to Oracle for steadying the good ship JavaOne and reigniting all the positive passions of the extensive and vocal Java Community.

OSGi also had more coverage than ever before at a JavaOne, 16 sessions in total, 3 of which were from the OSGi Alliance, and many others on open source projects and user case studies.

Not surprisingly Cloud seems to have been a dominant topic at the conference, with Oracle announcing their Public Cloud, not to mention the controversy and spin around the last minute ~~dumping~~ of, oops sorry apparently it had never been scheduled, Mark Benioff’s presentation.

From a Paremus perspective the conference excited us way more than we could have hoped. Firstly, Jason McGee (IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect, Websphere XD, Project Zero) endorsed the need for OSGi in the Cloud “for reducing footprint” in his presentation.

Secondly, Cameron Purdy (Oracle VP, Development), as reported by internet.com, described how the Service Fabric deals with provisioning applications:

“……….that application will come with a set of requirements,” Purdy said. “It’s going to show up in the data center, declare the requirements and the container will be responsible for injecting those things into the application.”

So it appears that both IBM and Oracle expect the next generation of Cloud to consist of the dynamic installation of software components, rather than the pushing out of software images that is offered by Amazon, RackSpace, and most other Cloud Providers today. The Paremus CEO, Richard Nicholson, clearly called this out at the OSGi Community Event in Darmstadt last month.

So its great news that two of the largest software companies on the planet are now seeming to support an approach that Paremus has been pursuing since 2005 with the Service Fabric (we called it a Distributed OSGi Runtime back then!).

It would be fair to say that at times it has certainly felt like, as the picture at the top of this post shows, we have been running on our own in the cold!

We are sure we are not all the way yet, and we will certainly keep on running, but it certainly feels like we are, in the words of Bob Marley….. Coming In From The Cold.

For now, perhaps we can indulge in a few marshmallows toasted on the fire, as a taster for whats to come with the Dawn of Composite Clouds……. oh yum……..sticky, sweet and warm…..

OSGi Community Event 2011 Over for Another Year

Sep 23

Posted by Mike Francis in Bnd, Bndtools, Cloud, Dev Tooling, Distributed OSGi, OSGi, OSGi Community Event, Paremus, Uncategorized | No Comments

What a great couple of days this week at the OSGi Community Event 2011 in Dramstadt. There were lots of great presentations and plenty of opportunity to network with everyone there. Our hosts, Deutsche Telekom, were great providing great meeting facilities and ensuring we were all fed and watered well.

All of the slides from the presentations at the event are now available from the OSGi Alliance web site. These include the ones from Richard and Neil which can also be found below. The video of the demo from slide 21 of the above slides can be found on YouTube.

Paremus at OSGi Community Event 2012 next week

Sep 14

Posted by Mike Francis in Bnd, Bndtools, Cloud, Dev Tooling, OSGi, OSGi Community Event, Paremus, Uncategorized | No Comments

Its the OSGi Community Event in Darmstadt, Germany next week at the Deutsche Telekom offices. The theme of the conference is the “Evolution and Success” of OSGi and there is an excellent selection of talks and panel discussions lined up for the two days (Tues 20th and Weds 21st September). There also looks to be plenty of opportunity for networking with community members, not least during the BBQ sponsored by SAP on the first evening.

Richard Nicholson will be busy with both his OSGi Alliance Presidential duties and also his talk on Tuesday “The Dawn of Composite Clouds – Why OSGi is the Most Important Ingredient in the Next Generation of Java Compute Cloud“.

Neil Bartlett is giving a talk on Bndtools, the Eclipse-based development tooling making it easier to work with OSGi, aptly titled ”Easy-peasy OSGi Development with Bndtools” which is on Wednesday.

Neil will also be taking part in the panel discussion “What Are the Major Tasks to Tackle Within the Next Two Years?” along with Alex Blewitt (Bandlem), Anish Karmarkar (Oracle), Christer Larsson (Makewave) and Karl Pauls (Luminis). The panel will be moderated by the OSGi Alliance Technical Director, Peter Kriens.

So if you plan to be there be sure to catch up with Richard, Neil or myself (Mike) either just to say hi or talk about all things OSGi over a Bratwurst or two.

If you havent booked yet then you can still register online or even turn up on the day armed with your credit card!

Hope to see you in Darmstadt next week.

Cloud & OSGi – The Dawn of Composite Clouds

Jul 14

Posted by Mike Francis in Cloud, Distributed OSGi, EclipseCon, Modularity, OSGi, OSGi DevCon, Paremus, RFP133, Software Maintenance | No Comments

A lot has been written about how Cloud Computing is revolutionizing the IT industry, and without doubt its one of, if not the, most fashionable trends in IT today. While there are clearly some big attractions to adopting Cloud it does nothing to address one of the biggest challenges of Enterprise IT today, that of the cost of software maintenance. According to Gartner this has been growing significantly over the last 60 years to a point where it represents around 70% of the lifetime cost of an application, with hardware accounting for only around 10%, and the other 20% being the development cost (see slide 4 in the presentation below).

To put some context around the scale of the problem, and the opportunity, software maintenance is a major contributor to what Gartner refers to as IT Debt, similar to the concept of Technical Debt.

Gartner have estimated IT Debt to have reached $500 billion in 2010 and it is predicted to hit $1 Trillion by 2015!

Cloud Computing for most Enterprises today is just about improving the efficiency and utilization of hardware by deploying, starting, stopping and removing Virtual Machine images containing rigid stacks of applications and their infrastructure. Certainly there are cost saving benefits to be achieved from this, however given that 70% of an applications lifetime costs are in its maintenance there are considerably larger savings to be achieved from addressing the maintenance of Enterprise application estates.

So virtualizing your hardware, and/or using third party hardware from a Public Cloud is really just tinkering with the tip of the iceberg when it comes to addressing Enterprise IT OPEX.

How can you start to address the cost of software maintenance?

One of the key ways to improve maintainability is by utilizing modularity. The principles of Modularity underpin every successful real world world structure – from houses to automobiles, space stations to computers. Nature learn’t these lessons hundreds of thousands of years ago; for example, the human body is an hierarchical assembly of modular components, many of which, with a little effort from medical science, are replaceable. If we can achieve this with the human body – why not enterprise software!

OSGi provides standards-based modularity for Java applications and so by utilizing OSGi with the Cloud you really can start to address these huge software maintenance costs. The presentation below “Cloud & OSGi – The Dawn of Composite Clouds” from OSGi DevCon/Eclipse Con 2011 looks at this challenge of spiraling software maintenance costs and goes on to demonstrate how the Paremus Service Fabric allows you to address this while simultaneously enjoying all the goodness of Cloud.

If you would just like to jump straight to the videos of the Service Fabric in action then you can find these on YouTube at the links provided at the end of this post.

The OSGi Alliance has also established a Cloud Working Group to specify the use of OSGi with Clouds and has been working on RFP133, the first release of which is almost complete. Participation in the working group is open to all and there is a mailing list available. Anyone interested in reading the RFP can request a copy from Peter Kriens, the OSGi Alliance Director of Technology.

Links to Paremus Service Fabric Videos

Building a high performance scalable architecture with Scala & OSGi

Jul 13

Posted by Mike Francis in Cloud, Distributed OSGi, Nimble, OSGi, OSGi Remote Service Admin, PaaS, Paremus, Scala | No Comments

Skills Matter hosted their first Scala eXchange last month and Dave Savage from Paremus presented on “How to Build a High Performance Scala(ble) Infrastructure in under 5 minutes”…pun intended!

The talk gave an overview and demonstration of a proof of concept that we built for a project to show how you can use Scala with OSGi, and specifically the Service Fabric, to quickly build a scalable, dynamic, extensible and robust application to be run in the Cloud.

It was a lightening talk so there are only 5 slides in the presentation below. However you can see a podcast of Dave presenting the talk over on the Skills Matter website.

If you would like to get your hands on the code to try this for yourselves then please drop us a note.

OSGi Users’ Forum UK Goes Global

May 28

Posted by Mike Francis in Dev Tooling, OSGi | No Comments

Well thats a rather grand blog title…and its true, well sort of…

The next UK User Forum meeting (Thursday 23rd June, 2011) is an OSGi Development Tooling Panel and as Chairman of the Forum I thought I should let you know.

OSGi tooling is often cited as one of the big bugbears of OSGi so we have decided to open the meeting up to non-members. We will be providing a live broadcast via Ustream, so anyone thats interested, wherever they are in the world, will be able to watch and take part by sending comments and questions via Twitter (#osgitool).

The Ustream broadcast will start at 18.25hrs UK (BST)/ 19.25hrs CEST/ 13.25hrs EDT/ 10.25hrs PDT/ 14.25hrs BRT/ 22.55hrs IST/ 02.25hrs+1 JST/ 01.25hrs+1 CST/03.00hrs+1 Sydney

And seeing as we are breaking new ground with Ustream, we thought why stop there. So we will also be having some of our panellists join us via Skype video.

Its taken a fair degree of planning, and thanks must go to our hosts Skills Matter, who have been extremely helpful in working through the details.

Confirmed panellists so far are:

Neil Bartlett (BndTools)
Peter Kriens (Bnd / OSGi Director of Technology)
Martin Lippert (Virgo Tooling Committer / VMware)
Simon Maple (RAD / IBM)
Stuart McCulloch (Maven / Sonatype)
Kaloyan Raev (Libra / SAP) via Skype Video
James Governor (Redmonk) as moderator

Full details of the meeting can be found on the OSGi Users’ Forum UK Website, including details for how to register to attend in person. We would also be grateful if anyone planning on watching via Ustream could register for a Remote Attendance ticket, just so we get an idea of the level of interest so we know whether its worth doing again.

You can also submit any questions you have in advance by email.

I hope you can join us in person or via Ustream on 23rd June for what looks set to be an interesting meeting.

OSGi in the Java ecosystem from JAXenter

May 17

Posted by Mike Francis in Complexity, OSGi, Paremus | No Comments

There is a great new Java Tech Journal from JAXenter that has been released today that focuses on OSGi.

Its a comprehensive 48 page read with 7 articles dedicated to OSGi and includes an introduction to the technology, tooling, the specifications and using OSGi in the Enterprise.

One of the articles “The Cure for Complexity – OSGi and the Enterprise?” on page 37, is by our CEO, Richard Nicholson, so be sure to check it out.

We would be pleased to get your feedback on Richards article so if you have any comments feel free to post them here.

You can get a copy of the complete OSGi Java Tech Journal for free from JAXenter.