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Leveraging
an active community of developers, Bull, France Telecom R&D and
INRIA have founded the ObjectWeb consortium to federate and extend OpenSource
initiatives in middleware. ObjectWeb will help users develop enterprise
applications upon OpenSource software.
Paris, France, January 31, 2002.
Leveraging the market success of their OpenSource software, Bull, France Telecom R&D and INRIA founded the ObjectWeb consortium today. Dedicated to providing software tools for building distributed applications, ObjectWeb aims to federate European and international OpenSource initiatives in enterprise middleware.
ObjectWeb software will enable developers to use OpenSource software to build distributed applications in any domain, including complex mission-critical environments such as telecom and finance. As a result, enterprises and organizations of all kinds will be able to bring to their business infrastructure the four advantages of OpenSource: cost reduction, openness, transparency and collaborative development by a large community of developers.
ObjectWeb is based on three innovative software solutions initially developed by the founding companies, which offer robust implementations of the main middleware standards, including OMG (Object Management Group) and JCP (Java Community Process) specifications :
Combining and/or associating ObjectWeb software components with other OpenSource software allows the creation of specialized middleware platforms: J2EETM 1, embedded, CORBA, ...
ObjectWeb software modules are available for download at www.objectweb.org. In compliance with the OpenSource model, their source code is open to developers.
As a consortium, ObjectWeb will coordinate the resources and actions needed for further development and extension of these components, which will continue to be developed under the collaborative model. ObjectWeb will also integrate, distribute and promote these developments. As INRIA is the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, and also leads the WC3 consortium in Europe (with MIT for America and the University of Keio for Asia) it will host the consortium, contributing to its openness and neutrality.
ObjectWeb intends to capitalize on an already very active developer community around the first modules developed by the founding companies. The JOnAS EJBTM server, from Bull's subsidiary Evidian, has been downloaded by more than 50.000 developers worldwide, and is already at work in hundreds of business applications today. JOnAS is also embedded in the Enhydra / Lutris Entreprise Application Server, which is one of the 3 leading J2EETM application servers worldwide today according to IDC, along with IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic. JOnAS is also embedded in Orcas, a J2EETM application server developed by Libelis. Jonathan and JORAM are embedded in JOnAS. Jonathan is also used in the Mosaïk suite of java component integration software tools developed by Kelua.
ObjectWeb is actively supported by RNTL (the French National Network of Software Technologies) and RNRT (the French National Network of Research in Telecommunications). Other companies that are tightly involved in ObjectWeb development include ExperLog, AFNOR, Lutris and the start-ups Kelua, Scalagent and Libelis.
"With the rapid development of e-business, information systems require robustness, fiability, security and openness more than ever" said Gérard Roucairol, R&D Director at Bull. "Thanks to its open development mode, OpenSource software offers ease of evolution and high compliance to standards. This is the reason why Bull, for years, has been highly involved in bringing its industrial experience to the OpenSource movement, notably through Linux and services activities. In ObjectWeb, Bull is joining with France Telecom R&D and INRIA to offer a new OpenSource breakthrough in the mission-critical field of enterprise middleware. The success of these first developments, and notably that of JOnAS, the EJB server developed by our software subsidiary Evidian, demonstrates the high market interest for this initiative."
"Telecommunication networks are among the largest distributed systems in the world, and software plays a fundamental role in guaranteeing their ability to evolve and their responsiveness. Enabling exchanges between, quite literally, millions of communicating entities, they require total mastery of software infrastructures" said Jean-Marc Pitié, Software Technologies Director at France Telecom R&D. "We believe that their integration capabilities will make middleware products a major part of network, services and information systems architecture. This is the reason why we support ObjectWeb, and we hope that in the mid term this initiative will allow us to benefit from open, safe and economical middleware solutions, at a worldwide level."
"By definition, middleware must allow the interoperability of the applications that are based on it" said Laurent Kott, Vice President for Technology Transfer at INRIA. " The OpenSource approach, facilitating access to source code and enforcing the robustness of software components, can prove very efficient in deploying new IT approaches and making new de facto standards. Through the foundation of ObjectWeb, INRIA is fulfilling its mission to add value and transfer to industry the results of the years of work in partnership with the teams of Bull/Evidian and France Telecom R&D."
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1 Sun Trade Marks
Bull is an international IT group with customers in almost 100 countries. In 2000, the company had a turnover of 3.2 billion euros. Bull is focused on servers, secure infrastructures and services, from consulting to systems integration and outsourcing. Bull is dedicated to helping customers transform their processes and infrastructures in order to take full advantage of information technology to drive their market growth.
Bull has gained strong recognition in the major economic sectors, such as the public sector, finance, industry and telecommunications
France Telecom R&D, research and development center of France Telecom, is France Telecom's innovation engine worldwide. Its mission is to anticipate usage and technological evolutions, and to innovate to offer customers the best of telecommunications today, while creating right now the technologies that will make tomorrow. The results of France Telecom R&D rank the group at the premier position in Europe for R&D in telecommunications.
The National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control is an institute for fundamental and applied research, involved in all areas where information and communication science and technology (ICST) are concerned. INRIA has six research sites, in Rocquencourt, Rennes, Sophia Antipolis, Grenoble, Nancy and Lille/Bordeaux/Saclay (France), and employs around 2400 persons of whom 1900 are research scientists, either at INRIA or in connection with the Institute.
INRIA plays a determining role in four areas of research: networks and systems; software engineering and symbolic computation; man-machine interaction, imaging, data, and knowledge; simulation and optimization of complex systems. INRIA develops partnerships with industry and encourages technology transfer and company creation (50 to date) in the field of ICST, notably through its INRIA-Transfert subsidiary, promoter of 3 seed funds: I-Source in the field of ICST, C-Source (Multimedia) and T-Source (telecommunications)
With MIT for America and the University of Keio for Asia, INRIA is the European leader of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is in charge of developing common protocols for the evolution of the World Wide Web.
| Bull | France Télécom R&D | INRIA |
|
Anne-Marie Jourdain |
Manuel Lesaicherre |
Christine Genest |
