The impact of research on the development of middleware technology

Abstract

The middleware market represents a sizable segment of the overall Information and Communication Technology market. In 2005, the annual middleware license revenue was reported by Gartner to be in the region of $8.5 billion. In this article we address the question whether research had any involvement in the creation of the technology that is being sold in this market? We attempt a scholarly discourse. We present the research method that we have applied to answer this question. We then present a brief introduction into the key middleware concepts that provide the foundation for this market. It would not be feasible to investigate any possible impact that research might have had. Instead we select a few very successful technologies that are representative for the middleware market as a whole and show the existence of impact of research results in the creation of these technologies. We investigate the origins of Web services middleware, distributed transaction processing middleware, message-oriented middleware, distributed object middleware and remote procedure call systems. For each of these technologies we are able to show ample influence of research and conclude that without the research conducted by PhD students and researchers in university computer science labs at Brown, CMU, Cambridge, Newcastle, MIT, Vrije, and University of Washington as well as research in industrial labs at APM, AT&T Bell Labs, DEC Systems Research, HP Labs, IBM Research, and Xerox PARC we would not have middleware technology in its current form. We summarise the article by distilling lessons that can be learnt from this evidenced impact for future technology transfer undertakings.

Middleware’s Message: the Financial Technics of Codata

“…But the distinctive features introduced at the outset of this paper-the asynchronic, multicast, and potentially infinite qualities of the distributed message-first came to be crucial for the operation of a digitally enhanced stock exchange (and their traders). These techniques would soon be found essential for a new generation of web services (Emmerich et al 2008), social communications platforms (Kreps et al 2011), and environmental monitoring/Internet of Things (IoT) systems (Stanford-Clark and Wightwick 2010), making the "streaming" world of asynchronous, multicast codata flows a familiar characteristic of the digital twenty-first century to come (Berry 2011;Berry 2014;Amoore and Piotukh 2015).…”

Service Robots Integrating Software 4nd Remote Reprogramming

“…In the process of implementation for system of geographically distributed group control mobile robotic devices [6][7][8], we analysed the existing systems that provide similar functionality, namely, Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS), Robotics Operating System (ROS), and their predecessors, such as Player Project, LAAS GenoM and URBI (see Wikipedia). These systems can be roughly classified into "large", i.e.…”

A software architecture for the analysis of energy- and process-data

“…Above this level, different middleware projects have been initiated in the last few years, to provide a solution for distributed systems in automation applications; they can often be used to access PLC and MES/SCADA level information. A overview can be found in [3]. A number of projects is based on web services and its DPWS (device profile for web service).…”