OSGi Alliance And HGI Collaborate To Boost Broadband Provider Flexibility And Service Offerings

Standards groups will define software execution environment for home gateways

SAN RAMON, Calif. – Sept. 16, 2009 – The OSGi™ Alliance and the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) announced today a partnership agreement that will enable broadband service providers to offer more flexible applications to residential customers. Under this agreement, the partners will work together to integrate the OSGi Service Platform into the home gateway, creating a software execution environment that will facilitate the deployment of new service capabilities into the digital home.

The home gateway (HG) plays a central role in the digital home, interconnecting computers, devices on the home network, and the Internet, all while supporting Quality of Service and remote management. Service providers are increasingly looking to deliver HG-based consumer services such as energy management, media server, and home network diagnostics. Pairing the dynamic and modular OSGi technology with HG-specific Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and protocols will greatly extend the service capabilities of the home gateway.

“The HGI’s projects are driven by the business requirements of its service provider members,” said Duncan Bees, chief technology and business officer of the HGI. “Within HGI, we recognize the requirements to offer more flexible services from the home gateway, and to select a technology which allows software applications to be more easily customized within a multi HG-vendor environment.

“The OSGi Service Platform is a mature, open and dynamic modular software system that meets the needs of advanced home gateways. It was important for us that OSGi technology has been widely adopted by other industries, and that it incorporates service-oriented architecture concepts. The work we are doing in adapting the OSGi technology to the Home Gateway will be a key part of HGI’s Release 3 and we think it will lead to increased service innovation by companies across the ecosystem.”

“The OSGi Alliance started its specification with the service gateway concept and is a natural partner to define a software execution environment for home gateways. Our Residential Expert Group is dedicated to tailoring and extending the OSGi Service Platform to connected gateway devices and connected devices,” said Stan Moyer, president of the OSGi Alliance. “Working with the HGI, an organization strongly supported by operators and the home gateway ecosystem, we can now review, adapt and extend our technology according to the most advanced concepts and requirements of Home Gateways. Cooperating with HGI also ensures that OSGi technology will be optimally integrated at all levels and layers of the gateway.”

The OSGi Alliance and the HGI will develop the software execution environment for Home Gateways within the context of established concepts, standards, and technologies in the home gateway and software/middleware markets. To implement the agreement, members of the organizations’ OSGi Residential Expert Group and HGI Software Execution Environment Task Force will align requirements and specifications, timetables and roadmaps, and identify other organizations and technologies which should be involved.