The Connected Home: The Open Services Gateway is Fulfilling the Promise of the Internet Lifestyle by Chris Trayhorn, Publisher of mThink Blue Book, January 15, 2002 Wouldn’t it be wonderful to automate some of your household chores, and leave home knowing that everything is safe and secure? With the delivery of network-based smart services through the home gateway, you could: • Get a discount from your utility for letting it manage appliance use during peak periods, or schedule your dishwasher to start automatically during discounted rate periods. • Subscribe to a security service (on demand) to watch your home or let in a relative when you’re away. • Set up home monitoring and other home-based services for your elderly or infirm relatives to help them comfortably maintain their independence while other family members travel. • Take photographs on your trip to Yosemite, view and print them with your TV, send them to friends and relatives with a screen phone, and incorporate them into a home video. These services and more are coming. At the 2001 JavaOneSM Conference, a booth called the Connected Den featured Java technologies powering the next-generation smart homes. Using residential gateway devices and set-top boxes as the nerve center for the connected home, Sun and its technology partners demonstrated exciting new services for home control and automation, interactive television, entertainment on demand, and advanced telephony. The Home Gateway The home gateway — a small, dedicated device that links networked devices — is the key to the connected home. The home gateway requires minimal or no upkeep by the homeowner, and is the platform for the delivery of new value-added services on demand. For example, using the home gateway would make ordering a home security service for a two-week vacation as easy as ordering a pay-per-view movie from TV today. Adding an embedded server transforms any broadband termination device into a home gateway. For more than two years, Sun has offered the Java Embedded Server (JES), designed to comply with the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) specification, for accessing services through the home gateway. The idea is to bring a technologically enhanced lifestyle to consumers who buy these products and services, and, in turn, bring new revenue to the companies that sell these new technologies. In the case of utilities, the smart meter deployed for automated meter reading build-outs could include the Java Embedded Server. Several leading AMR vendors are now incorporating Java Embedded Server into their latest products.This means that a utility could justify the investment in AMR infrastructure by not only the immediate productivity gains, but also the new revenue streams from the Connected Home service offerings. Most importantly to the consumer, all the services of the home gateway can be managed by external service providers. Just like cable or phone services, home gateway services are there when they are needed — the consumer doesn’t need to understand anything about how or why they work, just that they do. Delivering Services Through the Home Gateway Deregulation of telephone, cable, and utility industries has blurred their roles. Now, cable operators are moving to offer Internet access and phone services in addition to basic cable services. Phone companies are offering high-speed Internet access, and eventually will add video-on-demand services. Utilities are exploring energy management as well as potentially becoming Internet service providers. In this competitive environment, service providers must not only protect existing revenue streams, but also find ways to generate new revenue. Increasingly, they’re looking at the Internet to offer new value-added services to networked home customers. Some new services under development for this market include communication, entertainment, home control, and information services. Figure 1- Home Gateway Usage Scenario Insight of the Future The opportunity for service providers is to enhance home gateways by hosting and running value-added, subscription-based smart services — in other words, to become service gateways. Broadband providers will aggregate and personalize smart services on behalf of the consumer, providing high-margin value compared to today’s low-margin, broadband offerings. Traditional retail distribution will sell network-based products as part of an aggregated solution set. In fact, any vendor that touches the consumer — including telecommunication companies, multiple system operators, ISPs, utilities, application service providers, and device manufacturers — could provide individual smart services (service creators) or aggregate and personalize a suite of smart services (service providers). Demand Side Management Becomes a Reality Echelon Corporation, a leader in auto mating home devices through the Internet, is already taking advantage of this opportunity. “We’re bringing our customers significant cost savings and increased conveniences by linking the various everyday devices in the home to the Internet via LonWorks,” explains Jeff Lund, Vice President, Business Development and Corporate Marketing at Echelon. “For example, our smart LonWorks devices can automatically reduce energy consumption in response to real-time power availability signals from a utility company. That means the utilities don’t have to shut down large portions of their distribution grid to avoid a total power outage, as is happening today in California.” OSGi — Service Delivery Standard How can service providers efficiently and economically aggregate, manage, provision, and deliver a host of diverse services? A service delivery standard is the missing link in the networked delivery of multiple managed services over wide-area networks to local networks and devices in the home. To fully develop the market for residential gateways, a broadly embraced open standard is critical. The Open Services Gateway Initiative was formed in 1999 to define a framework for provisioning and remote management of managed services on service gateways. Today, more than 70 companies have committed to support its full incorporation and charter. A founding member of OSGi, Sun Microsystems is also a major contributor to its technical foundation. The initial OSGi specification is a layered framework application based on Java technology, which provides the flexibility to support the wide range of phone line, power line, and wireless network standards. It gives service providers, network operators, device makers, and appliance manufacturers the vendor- neutral application and device-layer application programming interfaces and functions they need. A set of core and optional APIs define a service gateway. The OSGi standard will help ensure that service providers, like Utilities, will have access to a large variety of content/ services and service gateway devices from independent vendors that can be used for their service offerings. Making It Happen Already, service providers are poised to begin technical trials, service creators are readying smart service products, and service gateways are entering the market. However, a key challenge remains — integrating these services and the required underlying infrastructure into a cohesive offering. Sun is working to provide an end-to-end services solution through its alliances, products, technologies, and services. Working with a range of technology partners such as those in JavaOne’s Connected Den demonstration, Sun will create an environ ment where service providers can verify the interoperability and stability of their smart services with those of other companies, as well as showcase their OSGi services to service providers. This environment will also enable service gateway manufacturers to demonstrate and market their products to potential service provider partners. Through these partnerships, Sun is committed to making available end-to-end solutions based on open standards that will make consumers’ lives more productive and more enjoyable. Filed under: White Papers Tagged under: Utilities About the Author Chris Trayhorn, Publisher of mThink Blue Book Chris Trayhorn is the Chairman of the Performance Marketing Industry Blue Ribbon Panel and the CEO of mThink.com, a leading online and content marketing agency. He has founded four successful marketing companies in London and San Francisco in the last 15 years, and is currently the founder and publisher of Revenue+Performance magazine, the magazine of the performance marketing industry since 2002.