Last Day at the Eclipse Foundation

This is my last day at the Eclipse Foundation. If you missed my earlier post, I have resigned from the Foundation and am starting to look for new opportunities.

Thank you to everyone in the Eclipse community for making my time with the Foundation an amazing experience. It is the people that make a community. I will definitely miss the people in the Eclipse community.

My plan is to stop posting to this blog. I’ve always wanted to start on medium so now seems like a good time. I will continue to be active on Twitter and LinkedIn. I hope we meet again soon.

#Onward

 

Time for a New Challenge

The new year brings a big change; I will be leaving the Eclipse Foundation at the end of January. This has been a difficult decision to make but it is time to take on a new challenge.

I am extremely proud to have been part of the Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse community since the early days. I fondly remember the chaotic and exciting early years of setting up the Foundation and the explosive growth of projects, members and users. The Eclipse Foundation was one of the first open source foundations that showed how professional staff can help bring together companies and open source developers to create innovative open source communities. In some ways, the Eclipse Foundation became the template for many of the new open source foundations started in the last 5 years.

It is great to be leaving when the Foundation is gaining tremendous momentum. In particular, EE4J, Eclipse Microprofile, DeepLearning4J, OpenJ9 and other projects are all showing Eclipse is becoming the place for open source enterprise Java. The Eclipse IoT working group continues to grow and is certainly the largest IoT open source community in the industry. The Foundation is definitely on a roll.

Of course I will miss the amazing people at the Foundation and in the Eclipse community. I am privileged to have worked with so many individuals from many different organizations. One of the best parts of my role is being able to learn from some of the world’s best.

It is time to start looking for a new challenge. I am going to take some time to look for a new position. My passion is working with smart technologists to create and implement strategies to promote the market adoption of new technologies and solutions. Today there are some fascinating new technologies being introduced, like AI/ML, Blockchain/Distributed Ledgers, Cloud Native Computing, IoT, etc. It is an exciting time to work in the technology industry and I look forward to taking on a new challenge.

My last day with the Eclipse Foundation will be January 26, 2018. The technology industry is very small so I hope and expect to keep in touch with many people from the Eclipse community. I will continue to be active on my blog, Twitter and LinkedIn.

IoT Trends for 2018

Last year I made the bold move to write-up the 2017 trends I thought would be important for the IoT industry and Eclipse IoT community. It seemed like a useful exercise so I thought a 2018 version is appropriate.

1. Edge/Fog/IoT Gateway computing will continue to gain traction.  It is not feasible that all IoT devices will be communicating directly with the cloud. The amount of data, network availability and latency, security are some of the primary drivers for pushing IoT compute toward the edges of the network. For example, an IoT solution for an oil rig needs to work regardless of connectivity to the cloud.

Companies like Dell, who happen to see hardware for gateways are announcing significant investment in edge computing. Silicon Valley VCs are now saying edge computing is the next big thing and potentially the end of cloud computing.  FWIW, I don’t see cloud computing ending anytime soon.

I think we will continue to see Eclipse Kura and Eclipse ioFog being embraced for edge computing. In 2018, I hope we will see Eclipse Kura running Eclipse DeepLearning4J  providing a great IoT machine learning platform at the edge.

2. Digital Twins will become a thing. I expect to see the IoT industry talk more about the term ‘digital twin‘. Most of the major IoT vendors claim support for digital twins: GE, IBM, Bosch, Amazon, MS. It will be interesting to see if the IoT industry will agree to a common definition for digital twin and even some common standards. Some common standards would enable a more robust vendor ecosystem for digital twins.

For Eclipse IoT, the Eclipse Ditto project is a new project that provides a framework for managing and creating digital twins.  The code based is from the Bosch implementation of their digital twin solution. You can check out their first milestone release.

3. Eclipse IoT Integration. The Eclipse IoT open source projects are maturing to the point where many are providing stable production ready functionality. We are seeing more and more interest in the community to focus on integration between the projects. I see this as a very positive sign and expect to see more cross-project collaborations in 2018. Is is possible the Eclipse IoT WG organizes the first Eclipse IoT release train in 2018?

4. More Open IoT Testbeds. In 2017, the IoT WG launched two open IoT Testbeds: 1) Asset Tracking and 2) Industry 4 Production Performance Management. These testbeds have successfully demonstrated how open source and commercial solutions can be integrated to solve a real IoT solution. In 2018, I hope we see more end-user organizations proposing and leading testbeds that show how a community of vendors can solve their IoT requirements.

5. Technology to watch in 2018. It is difficult to ignore the hype around blockchain. However it has not been clear how that blockchain technology scales up and down to meet the requirements of IoT. IOTA’s tangle technology seems to have an approach that may work for IoT. Robert Bosch Venture Capital announcement that they have purchased IOTA tokens to invest in the future of IoT seems pretty significant.

Low-power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technology also seems to be ready for wide adoption. There appear to be a lot of momentum around LoRaWAN. The Things Network community continues to drive forward an open source community for LoRaWAN. With more roots in the cellular industry, NB-IoT appears to be the alternative to LoRaWAN. Wide adoption of both technologies will be a positive influence on enabling more IoT use cases.

2018 will be another exciting year for IoT. My bold prediction is that 2018 is going to be the year that companies will start talking about their IoT success stories. Enjoy!

Industry 4.0 Meets Open Source

A key industry that is driving the Internet of Things is Manufacturing. Companies are always looking to make their manufacturing process more efficient, flexible and improve quality, while lowering costs. Therefore, modernizing factory floors and integrating factory equipment with the enterprise IT systems is of interest to many manufacturing companies. In Germany, they call this trend Industrie 4.0. They see IoT as being the fourth industrial revolution to fundamentally change the manufacturing industry. For history buffs, the other industrial revolutions are considered to be: mechanization with water and steam, mass production, and robotic automation.

The Eclipse IoT community has been developing open source technology that can be used to implement Industry 4.0 solutions. A key strength of our community is that we have companies like Bosch, Red Hat, Eurotech, Sierra Wireless, IBM and others,  who are experts in operational technology (OT) and experts in enterprise IT technology (IT). It is really the integration of OT and IT that leads to successful Industry 4.0 deployments.

To help educate organizations on how open source software can be used to implement Industry 4.0 solutions, the Eclipse IoT Working Group has announced two new initiative:

1. A new white paper titled ‘Open Source for Industry 4.0‘ has been published. This white paper describes the software features required for Industry 4.0 and what open source projects are available.
2. A new Eclipse Open IoT Testbed has been launched to showcase how Eclipse IoT technology and commercial solutions can be used to implement Production Performance Management (PPM) for factory floors. The PPM Testbed is a collaboration of Bosch SI, Contact Software, InfluxData, Eurotech and fortis GmbH. It is a great example of how open source software can be used to solve important challenges in the manufacturing industry.

Both these initiatives are great examples of collaborations made possible by the Eclipse IoT Working Group. It also shows how open source is really ready to solve Industry 4.0 challenges.

Next week we will be talking a lot about the PPM testbed, Industry 4.0 and All Things IoT.  I hope you will join us.

 

 

 

5 Trends to Watch in the Java Ecosystem

Over the last couple of months a number of announcements have been made that change the the Java ecosystem. These changes could have a long-term impact on Java developers and the Eclipse community. This week at JavaOne I expect we will hear about a lot of these changes. For the most part I think there are 5 key trends that all Java developers will need to watch.  If you can’t make it to JavaOne, many of these trends will also be highlighted at EclipseCon Europe.

1. Adoption of Java 9

Java 9 is finally out the door. This release has been a long time in development so now the process of adoption will begin. First step in adoption is making sure developers tools work with Java 9.  Eclipse JDT supports Java 9 from day 1.

At EclipseCon Europe, there are a number of sessions focused on Java 9, including:

• Eclipse JDT supports Java 9
• Session on Java 9 Reactive Streams
• JDT embraces Java™ 9 – An insiders’ view
• Experience report on using Java 9 as an application server

2. A more open Java SE future

Oracle has made two key announcements for Java SE and openJDK: 1) openJDK is moving to a 6 month release schedule. This should allow for more rapid innovation in Java SE but it will have an impact of the overall ecosystem, and 2) openJDK will start shipping Java SE binaries that are equivalent to the Oracle JDK. This essentially removes the field of use restrictions for Java SE. This could have a big impact for Java in areas like the Internet of Things (IoT).

Donald Smith, the Oracle Product Manger for Java SE, will be talking about the current status of Java SE and future changes.

3. Release of Eclipse OpenJ9

Earlier this year, IBM announced their intention to open source their J9 VM. The first release of the Eclipse OpenJ9 is now available and the response has been very positive. The potential of having another production ready Java virtual machine available in open source is going to given Java developers more choice.

Charlie Grace from the Eclipse OpenJ9 project will be giving an introduction to OpenJ9 at ECE.

4. A focus on Java microservices with Eclipse Microprofile

The movement towards microservices architecture is a theme pervasive across the entire software industry. Creating and deploying Java as microservices is something I expect we will hear a lot about at JavaOne and beyond.  The Eclipse Microprofile project is working very hard and fast to create specifications for Java microservices. The project has accomplish a lot over the last year and I expect we will hear a lot more in the coming months.

At EclipseCon Europe, lots of sessions from the leaders in the Microprofile project:

• Eclipse MicroProfile: What is it? Is it a JavaEE replacement?
• MicroProfile, Java EE, and the Application Server — Oh My!
• The Monitoring aspects of Eclipse MicroProfile
• Eclipse MicroProfile Config and OSGi Config Admin

 
5. Java EE Moves to the Eclipse Foundation

Finally, Oracles announcement to move Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation will be something to watch in the coming year. Oracle is moving very fast and the large Java EE community to beginning to engage. It is definitely going to be a process that will need the contribution of many many people.

At EclipseCon Europe we will have two talks on Java EE:

• David Delabassée from Oracle will give Java EE 8 is final… Now what?
• There will be a panel to discuss the process of moving Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation.

Next year at JavaOne, the Java ecosystem could be substantially different. It is definitely going to be more open and in my experience that will bring a lot of innovation. For the Eclipse community, it is exciting that the Eclipse Foundation is becoming the home for many of the open source communities for Java developers. If you don’t make it to JavaOne, plan to attend EclipseCon Europe to learn more about these key Java trends.

Annual Donation Campaign: End User Support for the Eclipse Foundation

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that is mainly funded by fees from our corporate members. Our corporate members definitely get a lot of value from their involvement with the Eclipse Foundation. Their support of the Eclipse Foundation is essential to the ongoing operations.

There are also millions of software developers who make use of Eclipse technology on a daily basis. For the most part these developers and their organization use the Eclipse IDE and other projects free of charge. Of course this is perfectly fine given the open source license for Eclipse projects. However, to sustain a community the size of the Eclipse Foundation requires ongoing support and resources. End user support for open source foundations, including the Eclipse Foundation, is important to the ongoing sustainability of the community.

To encourage end-user support,  we are launching the October Donation Campaign. The goal is to have over 1000 individuals donate to the Eclipse Foundation and help support the overall community. Last year we ran our first annual donation campaign which resulted in 847 people donating to our community.  This year I am sure we can do better.

Please take the time to donate to the Eclipse Foundation. For those who have donated in the past, thank you! You will also notice that we now accept credit cards. This will make it easier for people who can’t/won’t use Paypal or bitcoin.

All Things IoT at EclipseCon Europe

This year it is going to be All Things IoT at EclipseCon Europe. There will be a wealth of content that focuses on the IoT industry and technology.  It is going to be a great learning experience for anyone interested in IoT.

The main highlight is 3 days of single track IoT content:

1. Smart Home Day is scheduled for Sunday, October 22.  This will be the go to event for anyone interested in home automation and specifically openHAB and Eclipse SmartHome. Thanks for Deutsche Telekom for sponsoring this event.
2. The Eclipse IoT Working Group will be hosting a face-2-face meeting on Monday, October 23. Each year this meeting is a highlight of the Eclipse IoT community. It is an opportunity for the community members and new members to gain a deep understanding of the current Eclipse IoT projects.
3. Eclipse IoT Day is once again scheduled for Tuesday, October 23.  There will be 7 sessions on how Eclipse IoT technology is being used in industry. There will be speakers from Red Hat, Bosch, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Eurotech and others sharing their experience of using Eclipse IoT projects. Thanks to IncQueryLabs and Red Hat for sponsoring the Eclipse IoT Day.

In addition to these IoT specific events, there is also 15 IoT related sessions in the EclipseCon general program and the OSGi Community event. Companies like Huawei, German Aerospace Center, CEA, Renesas, Bosch and others will be presenting.

It is going to be All Things IoT at EclipseCon Europe. I hope you will join us and discover what the Eclipse community offers the IoT industry.

 

Goodbye Kat, Welcome Stephanie

This is the last week Kat Hirsch, the Eclipse Foundation marketing specialist, will be with the Foundation. Kat is moving on to a new opportunity and the next step in her marketing career.  We have been lucky to have Kat at the Foundation and we will certainly miss her dedication and passion.

At the same time, we are lucky to announce Stephanie Swart will be taking on the role of Marketing Specialist. Some Eclipse community members might already know Stephanie in her current role of Program Coordinator for the Foundation. Stephanie has done a great job helping and coordinating Eclipse project leaders and committers through the Eclipse Development Process. I am thrilled she has agreed to join the marketing team and look forward to working with her to raise the awareness of Eclipse projects and the Eclipse Working Groups.

Please join me to welcome Stephanie to the Foundation marketing team.

btw, we are now in the process of looking for a new Program Coordinator so please pass along any potential candidates.

Eclipse IoT in London

Once again we are hosting an Eclipse IoT Day in London on September 11. Like last year, we are co-locating with the awesome Thingmonk event, one of my favourite IoT events of the year. Thingmonk brings together some of the best thinkers in IoT so it is always a great chance to learn and network. If you are serious about IoT, you need to attend this event.

Like last year, we are doing a half-day Eclipse IoT Day as the pre-conference event for Thingmonk. We have put together a pretty awesome set of speakers to showcase what is going on in the Eclipse IoT community. Check out the line-up:

Ian Craggs, from IBM and the Eclipse Paho project, will be laying out the plans to support the new MQTT 5 specification. MQTT 5 is a major up-level of the MQTT spec so the Eclipse Paho plans and this presentation will be relevant for anyone using MQTT.

Michael Hirsch, from Bosch and the Eclipse hawkBit project, will cover a topic I think is critical to IoT Security and the general IoT industry: How to do large-scale software updates for IoT devices. If you can’t update a device, it is not going to be secure. Eclipse hawkBit is technology developed internally in Bosch but now open source at Eclipse hawkBit.

Julien Vermillard, from Sierra Wireless and Eclipse Leshan project, is going to talk about his experience deploying large scale M2M and IoT solutions. Julien has been in the industry before it was called IoT so he brings lots of experience to the event.

Tobiasz Dworak, from GlobalLogic will share his experience using Eclipse IoT technology to build water management systems. It is great to have hands-on practitioners sharing their experiences.

Sebastien Lembour was the winner of our Open IoT Challenge. His InTheModeforLife is a truly inspirational story of using open source technology to manage mood disorders. Sebastien is really using IoT to work on ‘things that matter’. It is a great story.

Finally, I will be talking about open source and industrial IoT. Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 are huge opportunities for IoT but they have specific requirements. I will talking about how Eclipse IoT technology can be used in industrial IoT setting.

A big thank you to Red Hat for helping to sponsor the Eclipse IoT Day. Red Hat continues to be a key contributor to the community. They definitely get the importance of open source for the overall IoT industry.

I hope you will consider attending the Eclipse IoT Day and Thingmonk. It will definitely be worth a trip to London.

 

 

 

 

New Eclipse IoT Charter and Steering Committee

It is hard to believe the Eclipse IoT Working Group was launch over 5 years ago on November 1, 2011, at the time we called it Eclipse M2M.  A lot has changed over these 5 years, including the name, and the IoT industry has matured to be one of the dominant technology trends in the technology industry. The good news is the Eclipse IoT Working Group has been a huge success. We have a thriving open source community that includes 30 different projects, more than 200 developers and 30 member companies. Eclipse IoT is well known and positioned in the industry and continues to see momentum and growth.

Given this community growth, we felt it was time to take a fresh look at the Eclipse IoT Working Group charter and the Steering Committee. After a number of drafts and revisions, we have updated and published the new working group charter.  Most of the changes were done to reflect the current focus on IoT runtimes and frameworks and adding more clarity to the roles and responsibilities of the Steering Committee.

Now that the new charter as been approved, I am thrilled to have Red Hat, Bosch and Eurotech volunteer to participate in the Eclipse IoT Steering Committee. All three companies are active leaders in the Eclipse IoT community and the general IoT industry. They each bring a unique perspective on IoT and open source to our community:

• Bosch is a world leading industrial company that is considered a leader in providing industrial IoT solutions. Their commitment and involvement in the Eclipse IoT community is evident by their involvement in projects like Eclipse Leshan, Eclipse Hono, Eclipse Vorto, Eclipse Hawkbit, and Eclipse Ditto.
• Eurotech is well known industrial gateway vendor that was one of the founding members of Eclipse M2M. They have experience incredible success with Eclipse Kura and are on the path to success with Eclipse Kapua.
• Red Hat has deep roots in open source and enterprise IT. In the last 2 years they have become deeply involved in projects like Kapua, Hono and others. They have also been instrumental in helping launch our Eclipse IoT Open Testbeds.  Red Hat understands that for IoT to be successful it needs to integrate OT and IT. They are on the path to being a leader in this space.

The next 2-3 years are going to be very exciting for the IoT industry and in particular the Eclipse IoT community. We have the technology and individuals that are making a difference and delivering real and valuable technology for IoT solution developers. It is very exciting to have these 3 companies help lead the way to our continued success and momentum.