One of the presentations was from Deutsche Bahn about their new Mobile Integration Platform (MIP). It was not only in this presentation that I felt that OSGi has become the ICE of deployment platforms. A 300 km/h high-speed trend/train with a lot of momentum. Think about it: Do you want to be on the train or in front of it.
There were lots of good and interesting presentations. Here are a couple of highlights ...
- Deutsche Bahn: Mobile Integration Platform - using OSGi to bridge the gap between the lifecyle of a vehicle (e.g. train) and software (e.g. an application). Vehicles have a much longer lifecycle than software. A huge challenge with a lot of opportunity, but only the tip of the iceberg. After you have tapped into the vehicle and can really access it (anytime, anywhere) I would predict a new dimension of integration challenges that will arise on the backend side to make all the relevant information available to the train and also to process the information that comes from the train. Interesting. Very interesting.
- Deutsche Telekom/T-Labs: "We catalyze technology-based innovations" - very good presentation on the role of OSGi as an enabler for innovation. As previously discussed, currently (Mobile) Telekom Operators look for ways to maintain or even increase their relevance in the value-chain. If they do nothing they might turn into (more or less) value-less bit-pipes. OSGi is the kind/type of technology that will allow them to innovate faster and to roll-out these innovations to the customers, much faster than previously possible.
- Sprint: Titan - the next generation mobile service platform ("Browser with AJAX is JUST NOT ENOUGH"). Earlier this year Sprint released its new mobile software development platform called Titan. This platform is a show-case, how Java technologies can come together to create a portable mobile software engineering platform that can bring applications to a wide variety of devices. OSGi is clearly a key enabler to make this happen.
BTW, this does not mean that the presentations I am not mentioning were not interesting. It means that I had to step out of the room for a meeting or a call and missed that specific presentation :).
Last but not least, we (IONA :)) showed a demo of the current status of the Distributed OSGi Reference Implementation. Overall a very energizing, educational, interesting event. I recommend you put it into your calendar for next year :).