Eclipse SOA - from a SOPERA Initiative to an Eclipse Initiative
I’m back from the first Eclipse Board Meeting in Europe, which took place in Berlin. There, I had the opportunity to present the latest news from the Eclipse SOA Initiative to the Board (find a copy here). Since our last announcement at the EclipseCON in March this year, the initiative has incredibly evolved. What started as an initiative by SOPERA, has turned into an initiative by the Eclipse ecosystem, as two things unfolded unexpectedly:
- To my surprise, other Eclipse members also share our vision and have signalized their participation, and
- The foundation provides a new type of organizational construct - the Industry Working Group (IWG), which allows to map the initiative’s goals to an appropriate organizational structure. This new organizational construct, the Industry Working Group, allows to setup sub-consortiums within the Eclipse consortium with own governance rules and brandings.
Once I realized that, I’m really fascinated and convinced, that it brings a lot of value to the Foundation itself (Mike – that credits belong to you. Great job!)
Back to the Eclipse SOA Initiative. The goals remain unchanged:
- Deliver an integrated and extensible SOA framework based on Equinox, that includes a tooling platform and a runtime framework
- Foster adoption of this framework by vendors and system integrators
- Achieve interoperability between products provided by the participating vendors
These goals can be achieved through two measures in the Foundation:
- Create a new top-level project “Eclipse SOA Platform“, which initially will consist of the two existing projects: (a) the STP projects for the tooling, and (b) the Swordfish project for the runtime. This new project should be the home for all future SOA relevant projects inside the Foundation(e.g. BPM, BAM, Registry/Repository). In the meanwhile, a new charter was created specially for that purpose. As next step, the charter will be approved by the board.
- Found the Eclipse SOA Instustry Wokring Group (We are looking for a cool nick name, so: Keep me posted if you have an idea!), which will be responsible for 3 things. (a) It will specify the requirements of the Eclipse SOA Platform, (b) it will create and take care of a new brand for that platform, and (c) it will define measurable criteria for the usage of that brand, as the brand should also be used by non-members, namely ISVs and system integrators.
This was a lot of work for the past 3 months, and it was a great teamwork together with Oisin Hurley from Progress, and Donald Smith from the Eclipse Management Organization (Guys, it was a great pleasure to work with you!). I also want to thank Ralph Müller for his support (Ralph - I very well remember the meeting we had with Mike at the Frankfurt Airport, thank you for your patience with me!). The next weeks will unveil, who will by the founders of this IWG beside SOPERA and Progress. But since this last board meeting, it is very clear: we already reached the critical mass. Who they will be, will be published here very soon, so: Stay tuned!
Ricco