Virtualization of service gateways in multi-provider environments

Abstract

Today we see more and more services, such as entertainment or home automation, being brought to connected homes. These services are published and operated by a variety of service providers. Currently, each provider sells his own box, providing both connectivity and a closed service environment. The open service paradigm aims at mixing all services within the same box, thus opening the service delivery chain for home users. However, open service gateways still lack important mechanisms. Multiple service providers can access and use the same gateway concurrently. We must define what this use is, i.e. we must define a notion of user. Also, service providers should not interfere with each other on the gateway, except if explicitly required. In other words, we must isolate services from different providers, while still permitting on-demand collaboration. By combining all these mechanisms, we are defining a multi-user, multi-service execution environment, which we call a virtualized service gateway. We implement part of these features using OSGi technology. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.