IONA has shipped over 6000 Orbix developers licenses to more than 1000 companies Worldwide. The following includes overviews of what a small section of these developers are using Orbix for today.
Orbix is used across a broad range of industry sectors, including:
| Telecommunications: | Motorola, Northern Telecom, British Telecom, Bellsouth, SouthWestern Bell, Telefonica, Ericsson. |
| Manufacturing: | Boeing, Schlumberger, Marquette Electronics, Asea Brown Boverei. |
| Banking: | Merrill Lynch, Swiss Bank, Nomura, Chemical Bank, Block Financial. |
| Defense: | ARPA, Raytheon, E-Systems, SAIC, Lockheed, TASC, CWC. |
| Medical: | Baxter, Mayo Foundation. |
| Computing: | Silicon Graphics, DEC, HP, IBM, Tandem. |
| Research: | Sarnoff Research Labs, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos National Labs, BIBA, CSIRO, BBN. |
| ISV's: | Broadvision, I-Kinetics, Thomson Software, Black and White, Thomson Software. |
and many more ... |
Iridium, Inc. is an international consortium of telecommunications and industrial companies funding the development of the IRIDIUM system. The consortium includes: Iridium Canada, Inc., China Great Wall Industries Corporation, Iridium Africa Corporation, Iridium Andes-Caribe of Venezuela, Iridium Middle East Corporation, Iridium India, Private Ltd., Khrunichev Enterprise of the Russian Federation, Lockheed of the US, Motorola of the US, Sprint of the US, STET- Societe Finanziaria Telefonica per Azioni of Italy, Pacific Iridium Telecommunications Co., Ltd. of Taiwan, and the Thai Satellite Telecommunications Company.
Orbix has been chosen by Motorola Inc., as the software with which it will build and control the ground station segment for the IRIDIUM®Global Cellular Network program. When it goes on-line in 1998, the IRIDIUM system will provide the first wireless communications network that spans the world.
"The principles CORBA and Orbix are based on are well established. With
Orbix
our programmers can develop distributed, object-oriented applications
quickly,
following a consistent and straight forward, standard-based model without
compromising on performance. Orbix handles many of the complexities of
distribution leaving our programmers to focus on functionality."
Dr. David Castillo, Lead Software Designer of the System Control
Segment
of
IRIDIUM
BCAG has selected commercial off-the-shelf software from Trilogy Development Group, Structural Dynamics Research Corporation, Baan International, and CIMLINC Incorporated to build SSPD. IONA's Orbix is being used to provide consistent integration between these applications enabling them to operate as a single coherent system.
Orbix+Isis is being used to reliably distribute trading applications written by Chemical developers using Infinity Financial Technology Inc.'s Fin++ Class Library, a set of C++ financial objects. Chemical Bank is also using Orbix+Isis as part of a bank-wide move towards object technology, which it calls Financial Application Framework (FAF).
"Chemical has the point of view of taking object-oriented technology as a
means
of being able to build a truly distributed computer environment, where the
processes and the data are physically separated, potentially in quite small
fragments. With Orbix+Isis Chemical is talking about everything being moved
across the globe. The problem we face in doing that is having an
environment
that is secure, that allows you to be able to make a request to an object -
something that would know where the object is - and be able to ensure that
the
messaging that goes from one object to another is performed in a guaranteed
fashion."
Brian Slater, Chemical's Managing Director of Global Bank
Technology
The client is written with Visual C++ for Windows/NT using the Microsoft Foundation Classes and Orbix. DBDOK was developed by Swiss Bank Corporation(SBC) about 20 years ago and it consists of an IMS-Database, a large number of IMS/DC-transactions and some tools. It stores basic dictionary types - like field-descriptions, domains (code-values), descriptions to fields and codes, alias', relations between code values etc. - as well as complex entity types like database-descriptions, COBOL-copy areas or various user defined entity types.
DBDOK is highly integrated in the development-infrastructure of SBC and its data is being used actively by a number of other tools and transactions. For example, the mainframe COBOL-compiler translates the copy areas used in a program at compile time. To access DBDOK-data within programs on different platforms in the project CART (Codes At Runtime) we developed a C API for these platforms (UNIX, OS/2 and MVS). The version for UNIX was then ported to an ORB-Server whose functions were used in the client-program.
In short, the set of ABB/KWL applications could only be used efficiently by experienced engineers. Nonetheless, ABB wanted to sell the system as a state-of-the-art environment to power plant customers as well as make it accessible to a growing number of internal users.
The EDS project, which began in 1993, has made full use of powerful Orbix features to put all of the ABB "tools" behind a common set of network interfaces enabling us to provide a central "EDS Navigator Console" application that assists users in the following:
The choice of IONA and Orbix in EDS V2.0 project, after looking at several alternatives, has paid off in many ways.
The Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) is a Federal Government initiative to integrate the commercial and defense sectors through cooperative R&D and commercialization of critical high-technology. The CWC will also supply its technology to two other related TRP funded consortiums, led by Arthur Anderson and IBM. Total research and development by CWC members will exceed $30,000,000 over the next two years.
The CWC plans to advance Distributed Object Management in the areas of development tools, concurrency control, security, and support for current applications. Large distributed information systems that use Distributed Object Management frameworks, such as CORBA and OLE/COM, will require ComponentWare technology. For example, components used in assembly must experience little or no downtime. To achieve this reliability, developers and systems integrators will assemble applications by using replicated components. With such a capability, a mission-critical application can continue to operate if any one copy of a component fails. Other ComponentWare benefits include performance improvement through parallelization, system management, and other kinds of complex coordination such as database replication.
Each CWC member will contribute and integrate key ComponentWare technologies. IONA, the current CORBA market leader, will extend their distributed object technology product, Orbix® with object groups and fault-tolerant services. ComponentWare already has its early adopters.
The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), a U.S. government agency, will host the consortium's largest deployment project, a nationwide system for logistics planning and management workflow integration to develop, acquire, and support the U.S. fleet. System capabilities include: automatic cost estimation, funding and contractor schedule coordination, functional requirement and engineering design data comparison, product quality monitoring, and project life cycle change management.
Ericsson Research Canada based in Montreal, a division of Ericsson Radio Systems AB, will be the first Ericsson organization to use Orbix in CMOS. The project started at the end of 1995 and the product will be available in 1996. CMOS provides a family of tools which allow an operator to plan, operate and maintain a high-quality CMS8800 based cellular telephone network. CMOS's user-friendly graphical interface enables operators to increase their productivity and efficiency in many tasks.
This is one of the first times in the telecommunications industry that TMN standards and CORBA have been used extensively to build a network management product. In order to maintain the leading position in an increasingly competitive global telecommunications market, Ericsson is focusing on its core business in switching, radio and network management, and is relying more on strategic suppliers to provide common products and components. IONA Technologies has been chosen as a strategic supplier that enables Ericsson to focus on its core business.
Ericsson Research Canada based in Montreal, a division of Ericsson Radio Systems AB, will be the first Ericsson organization to use Orbix in CMOS. The project started at the end of 1995 and the product will be available in 1996. CMOS provides a family of tools which allow an operator to plan, operate and maintain a high-quality CMS8800 based cellular telephone network. CMOS's user-friendly graphical interface enables operators to increase their productivity and efficiency in many tasks.
Telemed is a distributed client/server object-based designed using tools such as Gain Momentum from Sybase and Orbix. The system is deployed on multiple operating systems and hardware platforms - including Windows NT and SunSoft Solaris.
Gain Momentum is an object-based authoring tool for multimedia applications. It enables the incorporation of audio notes and animated video streams into Telemed, when integrated with Orbix, the software can be fully distributed across any network. The Telemed project requires storage of, and rapid access to, huge amounts of data in the form of patient records and charts. To protect patient privacy, a high level of security is required. Key security aspects including authentication, the ability to make changes in the data, and encryption of certain information are implemented using Orbix.
IONA has provided excellent support for Orbix via email contact through-out all stages of our work, including during the evaluation, installation and development periods. This is despite the geographical and time-difference problems between Australia and Ireland."
JPSD(Joint Precision Strike Demonstration): TASC is responsible for developing a multi-media data capture, analysis, and retrieval system. Orbix is used to implement the CORBA-compliant communications between the system's workstations for database queries, event notification, etc.
IMNET(Image Network): TASC is developing protocols to support efficient communications of images. A CORBA-compliant interface to these services is planned.
IMACTS(Image Management and Communications Testbed System): TASC is developing a large image server that supports image hierarchies and collaborative access. A CORBA-compliant interface to these services is planned.
These projects are currently using Orbix.
From the first phone call, IONA has been there to help us with technical
questions. I have never submitted a question about Orbix and not received a
response within 12 hours...usually quicker! IONA's staff provide a highly
personalised service to explain not only the `how's' but also the `why's'"
Dr James Watson, TASC
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