What is OSGi?

OSGi is an acronym for Open Services Gateway Initiative. It refers to the OSGi Alliance and the OSGi Service Platform that they have been developing for a number of years.

The OSGi Alliance is a non-profit corporation whose members consist of many large partner companies such as Intel, IBM and Nokia amongst many others in specialist fields.

The Alliance was formed in 1999 with the purpose of defining what is now known as the OSGi Service Platform. This is a specification for a new industry standard that provides a way to connect devices such as home appliances, monitoring systems and alarm systems to a wide area network such as the Internet. These devices can be remotely operated through this network.