Component Based Open Source Architecture for Distributed Telecom Applications

T-Systems Nova is a 100% percent owned daughter of Deutsche Telekom, which is the largest German public network operator with about 180.000 employees. T-Systems Nova itself has about 5000 employees. T-Systems Nova has specialist experience in integrating telecommunication and IT- systems in the TIMES markets: Telecommunication, information technology, multimedia, entertainment and security. T-Systems Nova helps with system analysis and consulting, development of system functions, system integration, version management and technical support. As a full-service provider of innovative solutions in telematics, T-Systems Nova remains at the side of its clients throughout the entire development and product cycle. Furthermore, T-Systems Nova represents Deutsche Telekom in the most important committees and forums dedicated to the global harmonisation and standardisation of products, services and networks in telecommunications and information technology. Besides that, T-Systems Nova has participated in many projects of Europe-wide and worldwide R&D programs (G7, RACE/ACTS, IST, EURESCOM).
The main focus of T-Systems Nova's Technologiezentrum is research, development and piloting for innovative telecommunications networks, network-associated services and components, Next Generation Service Platforms, and security architectures. Deployment and configuration problems as well as Quality of Service aspects are key research areas in the middleware department. The main focus of the IT security department is on security architectures for distributed object oriented systems especially on CORBA Security Services.

Institut für Informatik (Institute of Computer Science) is a department of Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin. The central theme of the research and teaching activities of the Institute is "Co-operating Systems". In that context, the Systems Analysis Group, chaired by Prof. J. Fischer, undertakes research in the arena of concepts and technologies to design, develop, deploy, install, operate and maintain distributed software systems within a single integrated supporting environment. The group's focus lies on languages and methods for system specification as well as on software component support platforms and distributed processing environments. The key research aspect in this arena is the integration of object-oriented analysis & design and component based manufacturing & operation of distributed systems.
In the context of languages and methods, object-oriented approaches, such as the Unified Modelling Language (UML), the Object Definition Language (ODL) and the Specification and Description Language (SDL) play a key role. Furthermore, emerging techniques for component implementation frameworks, component deployment and scripting languages are in the scope of its activities.
Beside these languages and methods, object middleware environments, that support such component based software systems, are considered an important research area of the group as they are a crucial enabling factor for their operation and maintenance. The research undertaken here involves the adaptation of CORBA technologies to the telecommunication domain and their enhancement with domain specific features and services e.g. protocols, management etc.
The Systems Analysis Group is directly involved in the standardisation processes of ITU-T and OMG. Many results of research activities have been contributed to recent and ongoing processes such as the definition of ITU-ODL and SDL-2000 within ITU-T, the specification of "Portable Interceptors", the "CORBA Component Model", the "IDL to Python" language mapping and "Interworking between CORBA and TC Based Systems" within OMG.
The group of Prof. Fischer participated in several previous European projects (partly funded by the EC), such as INSYDE (INtegrated SYstem Design), PLATINUM (PLATform providing Integrated services to New Users of Multimedia) and in the EURESCOM Projects P715 "EURESCOM Services Platform", P910 "Technology Assessment of Middleware for Telecommunications" and P924 "Deployment and Configuration Support for Distributed PNO Applications". The group has a long-standing history in co-operations with industrial partners, among them Deutsche Telekom AG, Siemens AG and Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corporation.

INTRACOM is the largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and information systems in Greece. Since its creation in 1977 it shows a constantly accelerating growth, with an annual turnover of 425 million euros (1999) while having established a strategic position in the European market and a significant presence world-wide. INTRACOM provides a wide range of products and integrated services for the design, manufacturing, and turn key project implementation and support in several areas. INTRACOM's main business is in the sectors of Telecommunications, Information Technology, Defence Electronics, Energy Management Systems, Integrated Wagering Networks, Satellite Applications.
INTRACOM is heavily involved in research and development, spending more than 39 million euros annually (1999), thus forming the strongest industrial R&D centre in Greece. Its research and development activities focus on the fields of software for digital telephony systems, high order data transmission through optical fibres, wireless communication devices, network management systems, energy control systems, integrated wagering systems, defence systems and terminal equipment, digital content handling and delivery.
The Development Programmes Department co-ordinates the company's participation in a significant number of collaborative research and development projects. The department has a very strong presence in several major European Research Programmes, such as ESPRIT, ACTS, Telematics, Ten-Telecom, IST, etc. The Development Programmes Department represents INTRACOM at various European Forums, including the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the European Association of Industries UNICE (representing also the Association of Greek Industries), and international bodies such as the UMTS Forum, ADSL Forum and OMG.

Lucent Technologies Nederland BV is the Dutch subsidiary of Lucent Technologies EMEA BV international group of companies. Lucent Technologies main activities are the development, manufacturing and marketing of telecommunication network products. Lucent Technologies Nederland primary business focus is on the Dutch market, but business is also conducted in other countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The product scope of Lucent NL covers the full range of telecommunication network products with emphasis on Switching Systems, Transmission Systems (for core transport as well as access networks), Equipment for Cellular and WLAN Networks, Operation Systems and Cable products.

The Forward Looking Work EMEA department in Lucent Technologies Nederland, has world class expertise in technologies that enable and support communication systems and services. Services range from applied research in the development of communication systems to the design and support of end-to-end multimedia solutions. The core competencies span the gamut of skills required to conceive, design, build and support telecommunications offerings. The department has broad expertise in theory and practice of data communications, multimedia communications and networking, ATM switching and transmission technology, SDH transmission systems, fibre-optic WDM technology for both switching and transmission products, optical amplifiers, PON access networks, analogue fibre-optic CATV transport and distribution components, communication protocols, network management for supporting multimedia communication, indoor networking, xDSL access systems.
FLW mission is to invent and apply world-class technology to the design and development of communications components, prototype systems and solutions for Lucent Technologies and its customers, targeting primarily the EMEA region. FLW brings with them a background in working in the RACE I, RACE II, ACTS, Esprit, IST and National frameworks in several projects. Some of them are listed below:
BONAPARTE: Broadband Optical Network using ATM PON Access facilities in Realistic Telecommunications Environments, TOBASCO: TOwards Broadband Access Systems for CATV Optical networks, DOLMEN: service machine Development for an Open Long-term Mobile and fixed Network Environment, EXPERT: Platform for Engineering Research and Trials - Implementation of the VB5 protocol, PLATINUM: PLATform providing Integrated services to New Users of Multimedia, BAF: Broadband Access Facilities, re ATM-PON technologies, COMFORT: COMponents FOR fibre-To-the-home, re optical analog CATV distribution, COMPASS in which we have built a ATM service multiplexer (called GTA), MONET: MObile NETworks, FRIENDS: FRamework for Integrated Engineering & Deployment of Services - Building a service creation and deployment platform, Internet 2 - Representing Lucent in the GigaPort project, the Dutch I2 initiative, Prisma - stands for Photonic Routing and Interactive Services for Mobile Applications, Tiphon Prototyping project - Tiphon is an ETSI group working on standardisation of interoperability between VOIP and POTS, Infogate: Information Gateway for home 2000, BC3: Broadband Copper Communications Components, NOTE: Nomadic Teleworking Business Environment, PRO3: Protocol Processor Project, ADAMAS: Fixed Wireless Access, WINMAN: Integrated Network Management, HARMONICS: Hybrid Access Reconfigurable Multi-wavelength Optical Networks for IP-based Communication Services, STOLAS: optical packet routing-based on stacked optical labelling.
The work in the FLW Department consists of analysis, computer simulations, prototyping and laboratory evaluation of new concepts and techniques, which can lead to new products and opportunities. The departments offers the following services to its corporation: increase Lucent's visibility in Europe, strengthen relations with universities and research institutes in the EMEA region, attract and educate diverse and highly-qualified people, transfer knowledge to the business groups, pursue filing of patents, organize and attend conferences/workshops/colloquia, participate in European and National Research Programmes, monitor and contribute-to standardisation efforts, participate in trials with customers in the EMEA region. FLW EMEA has access to the vast knowledge base of Bell Laboratories, the R&D arm of Lucent Technologies.

THALES, formerly known as Thomson-CSF, is the world's leading exporter of professional and defence electronics.

In 2000, THALES defence business generated close to 4.9 billions of EURO (57% of consolidated revenues). At the same time, THALES business development strategy has expanded its role in non-defence markets, which accounted for 3.7 billions of EUROS (43% of consolidated revenues). THALES had an average workforce of some 65,000 people.
THALES ranks third world wide in the defence and aerospace electronics sector today and is poised to play a pivotal role in European industry consolidation tomorrow. And the ability to harness all the critical technologies in virtually all its areas of business underpins THALES future competitiveness. THALES has invested heavily for many years to keep its technology expertise on the cutting edge, and R&D expenditures reached 21% of revenues, one-third of which was company-funded.
Some of these technologies have both military and commercial applications, and they bring THALES a competitive advantage in non-defence markets such as Simulation, Air Traffic Management, Avionics and Computer Services. Similarly, through the technological Partnership Agreement with Alcatel, military R&D Programs benefit from the latest advances in civil technologies.

THALES Communications

THALES Communications employs around 9000 people. The enterprise, which includes several subsidiaries, is one of the world's top suppliers in military communications and command systems, and in some civil markets.
Digital technologies, mobile communications, integrated services and the explosion of the Internet offer exciting new business opportunities and are completely changing the face of Telecommunications. THALES has been one of the driving forces behind these changes, and the features and functions that are now available are already part of the company's product offering for armed forces, government agencies and major organisations.
Immediate access to critical data across dependable, high-security communication systems, and the ability to process and analyse that data in a timely fashion, will always be key to a country's defence capability. Drawing on its own extensive experience, and further strengthened by Alcatel's expertise in these areas, THALES is set to consolidate its world wide leadership position in the communication and command systems sector.

ObjectSecurity Ltd. is a spin-off of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. It was founded in June 2000 to transfer the results of academic research to consulting and industrial research and development, and to bundle the abilities of several experienced scientists, consultants and programmers. ObjectSecurity's core competence is the enforcement of security policies in complex distributed systems, including CORBA and EJB security, the underlying cryptographic mechanisms and protocols, and related area such as firewalls and public key infrastructures. The company is also developing OEM security software. ObjectSecurity's customers include large telecommunications carriers and vendors, banks, consulting companies, and research organisations in various European countries.
As a part of Deutsche Telekom's Secure CORBA project, ObjectSecurity developed MICOSec, the first Open Source implementation of the CORBA security services. In addition to internal projects at Deutsche Telekom and ObjectSecurity (a secure platform for mobile applications and research in CCM security) MICOSec is used in academic and industrial projects.
The cooperation with Deutsche Telekom now is being continued in several projects in CORBA security, Open Source Software and Ubiquitous Computing.
ObjectSecurity is an OMG member and actively engaged in the Security Special Interest Group (SecSIG).

As indicated by its very name, the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 (LIP6 for short), harbors under a common roof most of the research done in the department of Computer Science of University Pierre et Marie Curie (also known as Paris 6). It was created on January 1st, 1997 as part of the general policy conducted by the University in restructuring its research activities in view of its 4-year contract 1997-2000. Accordingly, the LIP6 is associated with the CNRS as a Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR 7606). The new laboratory is a restructuring of three former laboratories (LAFORIA, LITP, MASI) created 25 years ago. LIP6 is composed of nine research teams. The researchers involved in COACH belong to the "Cooperative and Distributed Systems" or SRC (Systèmes Répartis et Coopératifs) team.
Our research within the SRC team deals with system aspects of co-operative and distributed applications. Our contribution is theory oriented, regarding the distributed algorithmic and formal verification aspects, methodology oriented for the specification and prototyping aspects and system programming oriented in order to implement our CASE environment and to implement mechanisms for dynamic load balancing, fault tolerance, and our dynamically configurable execution platform: the Virtual Machine. The team is composed of about twelve Researchers and Professors, five administrative and technical staff and about fifteen Ph.D. students. SRC was or is involved in several European projects: PROOFS (Esprit 2), IRENA (Eureka), MATCH (HCM), and with a number of projects with French industrial partners (France Telecom R&D, ONERA, Alcatel).

Linked to the CNRS (Department of SPI, Science for Engineers), to the Ministry of National Education, University and Research (MENESR) and to the University of Science and Technology of Lille (USTL), the Computer Science Laboratory of Lille or Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale de Lille (LIFL) is located in the north of France as part of the LILLE I university campus. Its Web address is http://www.lifl.fr/index.html.
The LIFL was established in 1983 by bringing together the Architecture and Systems team and the Theoretical Computing team. Since then it has experienced a rapid growth of 10% per annum. At present the laboratory has more than 120 researchers (Professors, CNRS staff, Post-doctorates and PhD students) and deploys a particularly rich computer infrastructure (more than 100 workstations connected together by Ethernet or ATM networks, several parallel computers and a range of graphics equipment). This expansion has allowed LIFL to develop a balanced structure by bringing together its two traditional strengths (CALC: Computer algebra, Algorithms, Languages and Complexity and Pardis: Parallel and Distributed Computing Science) and also by the creation of a third focus (CIM: Cooperation, Imaging and Mobility) on specific themes like CORBA middleware, smart cards, virtual reality, medical simulators and agents.
The researchers involved in the COACH project belong to the " Software Objects and Components Engineering " or GOAL (Génie des Objets et composAnts Logiciels) team. This team is composed of about two Professors, five Assistant Professors, and about six PhD students. The GOAL research interests include object/component-oriented designing and programming, distributed computing and applications, middleware, CORBA, scripting and trading facilities, distributed component models, and CORBA Component Model. Its main known contributions are PM2 for multi-threaded distributed computing, MARS for parallel adaptive applications in heterogeneous environments, CorbaScript and Java IDLscript for a dedicated CORBA scripting language, IDLscript as the OMG CORBA 3.0 scripting language specification, CorbaWeb for a generic bridge between CORBA and the WWW, CromeBD for Objects and Views based Designing, FOCALE for large distributed scientific application deployment, TORBA for advanced trading facility, and OpenCCM as the first world-wide available platform for the CORBA Component Model. Most of these contributions are diffused as Open Source software. The GOAL team is involved in some French projects (RNRT CESURE and COMPiTV, RNTL ACCORD and IMPACT) with industrial partners as Canal+, EDF/GDF, France Telecom, Gemplus, THALES, and Softeam.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.(Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research) is Europe's leading research organization for applied research. It was founded in Munich in 1949 as a non-profit endeavor and takes its name from Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826), the successful Munich researcher, inventor and entrepreneur. The Fraunhofer Society is an autonomous organization which currently - following the merger with GMD - Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH in Sankt Augustin - maintains 56 research institutes and a patent office. It now represents Europe's largest research capacity in the field of information technology. The Fraunhofer Society maintains a decentralized organizational structure. Whilst the administrative headquarters are in Munich and in Sankt Augustin near Bonn, the research institutes operate from different locations in all 16 of the German Laender, where they carry out research and development projects on a contract basis on behalf of private industry, the service sector and government. The clients receive advanced technical know-how and very exclusive services. A staff of 11,000, the majority of whom are scientists and engineers, generate the annual research budget of more than 880,000 kEuro. Work focuses on specific tasks across a wide spectrum of research fields. Where systematic solutions are required, several institutes collaborate on an interdisciplinary basis.
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is a member of the European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), which has partners in 13 European countries, including Scandinavia and Central/Eastern Europe. Most are independent Research and Development laboratories with strong links to local industry. ERCIM partners have generated about 400 spin-off companies and do joint developments with SMEs.
FOKUS, the Research Institute for Open Communication Systems, located in Berlin, is one of the former GMD institutes now part of the Fraunhofer society. Its main focus lies on intelligent multimedia systems as well as on communication and co-operation systems. The work of FOKUS covers design, specification, implementation and consulting in the following areas:

• interactive multimedia applications
• distributed object technology, platforms and (tele)communication services
• intelligent mobile agent technology
• electronic commerce
• global heterogeneous networking and internet technologies
• advanced network technologies and systems
• mobile and broadband wireless communications
• testing, interoperability and performance evaluation of distributed (tele)communication systems.