cloudfree/index.php - www.eclipse.org/proposals - Git at Google

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 $pageTitle 		= "CloudFree Commerce Platform Proposal";
 $pageKeywords	= "cloudfree, commerce, platform, osgi, equinox, project, proposal";
 $pageAuthor		= "Gunnar Wagenknecht, AGETO Service GmbH";

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 <h1>CloudFree Commerce Platform</h1>

 <?php
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 generate_header("CloudFree");
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 <p>
 This project proposal is in the
 <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/Eclipse%20Development%20Process%202003_11_09%20FINAL.pdf">Proposal Phase</a>
 and is posted here to solicit community feedback, additional project
 participation, and ways the project can be leveraged from the Eclipse
 membership-at-large. You are invited to comment on and/or join the project.
 Please send all feedback to the
 <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.cloudfree" title="eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup">eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup</a>.
 </p>

 <h2>Background</h2>
 <p>
 	E-commerce has become an integral part of todays ecosystem and is
 	material to many organizations businesses. It is one of the fastest
 	growing sectors in the Internet. More and more organizations
 	(manufacturers, retailers, education, travel and many others) are looking
 	at e-commerce as a cost effective and reliable channel to sell goods and
 	services to businesses and consumers. Unlike a few years ago, the
 	e-commerce initiatives are no longer seen as side track or pilots. As
 	the Internet usage grows exponentially with increasing bandwidths and
 	more and more Internet enabled devices, the development of integrated,
 	extendable e-commerce platforms is becoming critical to future growth
 	for any organization. This includes not only traditional business, but
 	also public organizations and governments, any educational organization,
 	or even charity. Everywhere an Internet transaction is performed, it is
 	safe to talk about "e-commerce" now.
 </p>
 <p>
 	While the past adoption of e-commerce was determined by the
 	availability of "on-premise", proprietary software solutions developed
 	by a handful software vendors, todays vendor landscape looks different:
 	It spans from low end, easy to deploy yet inflexible open source
 	solutions to ISP based "SaaS" offerings. Which seems to be good a good
 	fit for some user groups is certainly a thread for others who want to
 	explore new business opportunities outside of their vendor's radar.
 	Coming from such a background, we recognize the need for a dynamic,
 	flexible and extensible platform which is capable of hosting e-commerce
 	sites varying from a few to thousands of visitors and transactions per
 	day. Flexibility and extensibility in today's e-commerce depends on a
 	software vendor's roadmap, which is often determined by "the least
 	common denominator" of potential users. Quick, unconditional
 	provisioning of new features, feature updates or custom extensions
 	- preferably with zero downtime - is hard to find.
 </p>
 <p>
 	Organizations who seek new, competitive e-commerce processes do
 	experience that adopting e-commerce is not as easy as download, unzip
 	and run. Besides sticking to the vendor's product strategy and having to
 	pay extensive maintenance fees, many custom requirements can be
 	integrated by finding a compromise between the software vendor's feature
 	roadmap and their own requirements. Having said this, if organizations want to
 	leverage the R&amp;D efforts and development of current e-commerce
 	vendors of any kind, they will certainly accept these compromises. But
 	organizations who want to explore innovative e-commerce initiatives and
 	at the same time rely on standardized components supported by a large
 	user group will barely find a solution today. They have to develop for
 	themselves a custom and proprietary solution which has high
 	maintenance efforts and will be constrained by high ongoing development
 	efforts.
 </p>
 <p>
 	While we have discussed the different user groups, also the bespoken
 	software vendors are struggling with legacy platforms which are hard to
 	maintain, extend and customize. Seeking a new technology platform to
 	develop a product offering, whether it is SaaS or on-premise, is a
 	gamble. What is the hottest technology today, can be outdated tomorrow.
 	Technology platform vendors coming and going and what seems to be a wide
 	choice is finally a selection between a couple of big software vendors
 	with very high fees, slow feature adoption and no interest in
 	e-commerce vendor specific needs. There is a development environment
 	needed, which allows e-commerce software vendors to develop their own suites
 	of products for their client base, combining it with other
 	technology and providing the right "runtime" environment for custom
 	development, high performance and scalability with low cost operations
 	and maintenance.
 </p>
 <p>
 	The Equinox Runtime provides a highly dynamic environment for building
 	component oriented applications. Equinox and CODA (Component Oriented
 	Development and Assembly) is a proven component model which is also
 	perfectly suited for building flexible, dynamic and extensible
 	enterprise solutions. We therefore aim to bring this model into the
 	e-commerce domain. E-commerce has been and still is one of the fastest
 	growing sectors in the Internet.
 </p>

 <h2>Description</h2>
 <p>
 	The CloudFree Commerce Platform is an open, dynamic and extensible
 	platform for e-commerce solutions of all kind. By using Equinox and CODA
 	we define a new platform that is designed from the beginning to gain
 	leverage from the key advantages of Equinox and CODA - flexibility,
 	extensibility and community.
 </p>
 <p>
 	CloudFree will support small, to medium, to large e-commerce sites by
 	providing a scalable architecture. It will be useful for standard
 	e-commerce shops to sell and merchandise goods as well as any public
 	organization who wants to leverage the Internet as a communication and
 	transaction channel, and for any organization who encourages their (potential)
 	users to perform a transaction, whether this is an order, an
 	application, online registration or content download provisioning. It
 	will be accessible and easy to use for small organizations, large
 	enterprises with multi-dimensional e-commerce initiatives or as a
 	technology platform for software vendors. It will allow users to build and
 	publish third party components which can be used and refined by all
 	associated users.
 </p>
 <p>
 	No focus is set on a specific feature implementation technology. The
 	CloudFree concept will be extensible and pluggable so that it can be
 	exchanged and adapted from a standalone server deployment to a
 	large-scale enterprise cluster consisting of many nodes spread across
 	different locations. It grows with the user's needs and can be maintained
 	by anyone who is familiar with the Eclipse environment. By that it gets
 	the large support of the community to conquer the most complex
 	e-commerce scenarios and use cases. Organizations who decide to develop
 	their e-commerce processes in CloudFree will have the development
 	standards of the Eclipse community, the ideas of many contributors and
 	the reliability of proven e-commerce modules at hand.
 </p>
 <p>
 	The CloudFree Commerce Platform will develop infrastructure, components,
 	and services that will support development, provisioning and operation
 	of e-commerce solutions of all kind including content transactions. The
 	essential functional elements of CloudFree 1.0 are well understood by
 	domain experts. While there is significant engineering effort required,
 	we feel that the work plan as proposed here can be implemented given
 	sufficient and experienced resources, and does not involve an
 	unrealistic level of technical risk. Consequently we propose this
 	project be considered as an incubator within the Technology top-level project.
 </p>

 <h2>Project Principles</h2>
 <p>
   Among the key principles on which this project has been initiated, and will be run, are the following:
   <ul>
     <li>
 		<b>Leverage Eclipse Ecosystem</b> - A major goal of this project is to
 		apply the application development strengths of the Eclipse Project to
 		the e-commerce domain. The project will work closely with other Eclipse
 		project areas whenever possible to leverage the capabilities being
 		developed in those areas.
 	  <br><br>
     </li>
     <li>
 		<b>Vendor Neutral</b> - We aim to encourage Eclipse participation and
 		drive Eclipse market acceptance by providing vendor-neutral capabilities
 		and to encourage participation for complementary capabilities through
 		additional projects.
 	  <br><br>
     </li>
     <li>
 		<b>Open, Standards-based Development</b> - Where market adopted
 		standards exist that meet the design goals, our aim is to leverage and
 		adhere to them. Where market adopted standards do not exist, we will
 		develop and publish any new capabilities in the Eclipse open forum.
 	  <br><br>
     </li>
     <li>
 		<b>Incremental Delivery</b> - In order to meet the pent-up demand for a
 		standardized platform for e-commerce solutions, we aim to deliver
 		functionality to the market as rapidly as possible via an incremental
 		delivery model.
 	  <br><br>
     </li>
 	<li>
 		<b>Invite Users</b> - During project execution we are going to work
 		with potential user groups to understand the current needs even better
 		and get guidelines for further priotization of work. The group will have
 		its own schedule, but will actively seek for and involve potential
 		users.
     </li>
   </ul>
 </p>
 <p>

 <h2>CloudFree Vision</h2>
 <p>
 The key vision on which this platform is based upon is:
 <ul>
   <li>
     <b>No Clouds</b> - It must be a pleasure to work with the platform,
     develop for and extend it, operate it and provide solutions on it.
   </li>
 </ul>
 </p>
 <p>
 Among the principles behind this vision are the following:
 <ul>
   <li>
     <b>Development Modularity &amp; Extensibility</b> - Everything will
     be build as components, can be developed and deployed individually, by the
     community, project committers and partners.
 	<br><br>
   </li>
   <li>
     <b>Solution Flexibility</b> - The platform, its components and
     services will be open to new markets, market changes and must adapt to
     business requirements.
 	<br><br>
   </li>
   <li>
 	<b>Operational Simplicity</b> - Easy provisioning into data centers
 	combined with smart and simple, but not simplistic, administration and
 	monitoring is a key element in making the platform operation a pleasure.
 	<br><br>
   </li>
   <li>
     <b>Cheap Scalability</b> - It is important to grow
     with&nbsp; clients and support a scalability model from the ground up.
 	<br><br>
   </li>
   <li>
 	<b>Stackability</b> - Platform, modules and components can be put
 	together in packages by third parties to allow easy deployment and
 	shipment - this saves time and effort.
   </li>
 </ul>
 </p>

 <h2>Project Scope</h2>
 <p>
 	The CloudFree Commerce Platform will develop infrastructure, components,
 	services, and tools that will support development, provisioning and
 	operation of e-commerce solutions or e-commerce development
 	environments. Development of a fully-fledged e-commerce solution is
 	out-of-scope of this project. Instead, we will focus on the runtime
 	infrastructure and core components which are essential for building
 	e-commerce solutions or e-commerce products. Additionally, exemplary
 	services will be provided which demonstrate the extensibility and
 	flexibility of the CloudFree Commerce Platform.
 </p>
 <p>
 The CloudFree Commerce Platform Project will initially focus on the
 following components and exemplary services.
 <ul>
   <li>
 	<b>Inventory, Customer & Order Service</b> - A set of "core" services
 	typically required by e-commerce sites. These services will allow users to
 	define, manage and retrieve products, customers and orders.
   </li>
   <li>
 	<b>Exemplary Storefront Site</b> - Typically, storefronts are tailored
 	to merchant needs. They may be deeply integrated into portals and
 	provide rich dynamic content. Therefore, only an exemplary storefront
 	will be created which demonstrates the usage and integration with the
 	services provided by the platform.
   </li>
   <li>
 	<b>Contextual Runtime</b> - This is a central model for establishing a
 	"context" for building multi-tenant applications offered as SaaS.
 	Typically, certain aspects in a SaaS system will not be static. For
 	example, the availability of extension X of a service may depend on a
 	service level agreement of the tenant using that service.
   </li>
   <li>
 	<b>Clustering & Monitoring Service</b> - With scalability and
 	operational simplicity in mind, the clustering service will enable
 	multiple installations to form an application cluster and provide
 	operators with a management interface. Monitoring will be built into the
 	platform as an essential concept and will also provide integration and
 	extension points.
   </li>
   <li>
 	<b>Admin Service</b> - A central administration interface provided by
 	the platform. The service will also provide extension points to allow
 	extenders to integrate nicely with the platform.
   </li>
   <li>
 	<b>Provisioning Tool</b> - A utility for provisioning updates and new
 	components across installations in a cluster in an automated and
 	controlled way.
   </li>
 </ul>
 </p>
 <p>
 Outside the project's scope will be the development of vendor-specific
 integrations, such as integrations with specific ERP or CRM systems, as
 well as highly specialized services, such as a sophisticated product
 recommendation service. However, the CloudFree platform will provide
 frameworks and extension points to allow third parties building such
 integrations and specialized services.
 </p>
 <h2>Relationship with other Eclipse Projects</h2>
 <p>
     The CloudFree Commerce Platform project will be build on top of Equinox.
     Eclipse projects which provide useful required technologies and
     functionalities, including Riena, EclipseLink, and ECF, are candidates that the
     CloudFree Commerce Platform codebase might depend upon.
 </p>
 <h2>Organization</h2>
 <p>
     We propose this project should be undertaken as a Technology project. Being
     a Technology project gives it room to experiment without disruption to other
     Eclipse Platform development work. Finally, since Technology sub-projects
     are not meant to be ongoing, we foresee three possible evolutionary paths
     for the subproject:
   <ol>
     <li>
       The project is moved to a permanent state as a Runtime project.
     </li>
     <li>
       The project is moved to a permanent state under a new "SaaS" top-level
       project.
     </li>
     <li>
       The technology proves to be insufficient for Eclipse and the work is set
       aside.
     </li>
   </ol>
 </p>
 <p>
     These paths are not mutually exclusive. Some combination of some or all of
     these paths may be the result of the work done in this project.<br id=yxif>
 </p>
 <p>

 <h2>Interested Parties</h2>
 <p>
     <a href=http://www.ageto.de/ id=j43l title="AGETO Service GmbH">AGETO
     Service GmbH</a>, as the
     submitter of this proposal, welcomes interested parties to post to the
     <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.cloudfree" title="eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup">eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup</a>
 	and ask to be added to the list as interested parties or to
     suggest changes to this document.
 </p>
 <p>
   <b>Initial Committers</b><br>
   <ul>
     <li>
       Gunnar Wagenknecht, Project Lead (AGETO Service GmbH)
     </li>
     <li>
       Ronny Schmidt, Committer (AGETO Service GmbH)
     </li>
     <li>
       Ralph Spickermann, Committer (AGETO Service GmbH)
     </li>
     <li>
       Frank Rub, Committer (igniti GmbH)
     </li>
     <li>
       Christian G&uuml;nzl, Committer (igniti GmbH)
     </li>
   </ul>
 </p>
 <p>
   <b>Interested Companies</b><br>
   <ul>
     <li>AGETO Service GmbH, Jena (Germany)</li>
     <li>igniti GmbH, Jena (Germany)</li>
     <li>TowerByte e.G., Jena (Germany)</li>
     <li>PlanetEye Inc., Toronto (Canada)</li>
     <li>Weigle Wilczek GmbH, Esslingen (Germany)</li>
   </ul>
 </p>
 <h3>Code Contributions</h3>
 <p>
     Gunnar Wagenknecht is offering a CloudFree prototype as an initial codebase.
     The prototype is built with proposed concepts in mind and will be used as a
     potential codebase.
 </p>
 <h2>Tentative Plan</h2>
 <p>
     Development is ongoing and a first demonstrable showcase is planned for
     November 2008. This prototype will demonstrate key concepts such as
     extensibility and provisioning. It will be used to socialize community
     feedback and to make a decision on the ongoing development. In case of
     significant community interest the development continues following an
     Eclipse iterative development approach with version 1.0 scheduled for
     Q4/2009.
 </p>

       </div>
   </div>
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	<h1>CloudFree Commerce Platform</h1>

	<?php
	include_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/projects/fragments/proposal-page-header.php");
	generate_header("CloudFree");
	?>

	<p>
	This project proposal is in the
	<a href="http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/Eclipse%20Development%20Process%202003_11_09%20FINAL.pdf">Proposal Phase</a>
	and is posted here to solicit community feedback, additional project
	participation, and ways the project can be leveraged from the Eclipse
	membership-at-large. You are invited to comment on and/or join the project.
	Please send all feedback to the
	<a href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.cloudfree" title="eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup">eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup</a>.
	</p>

	<h2>Background</h2>
	<p>
	E-commerce has become an integral part of todays ecosystem and is
	material to many organizations businesses. It is one of the fastest
	growing sectors in the Internet. More and more organizations
	(manufacturers, retailers, education, travel and many others) are looking
	at e-commerce as a cost effective and reliable channel to sell goods and
	services to businesses and consumers. Unlike a few years ago, the
	e-commerce initiatives are no longer seen as side track or pilots. As
	the Internet usage grows exponentially with increasing bandwidths and
	more and more Internet enabled devices, the development of integrated,
	extendable e-commerce platforms is becoming critical to future growth
	for any organization. This includes not only traditional business, but
	also public organizations and governments, any educational organization,
	or even charity. Everywhere an Internet transaction is performed, it is
	safe to talk about "e-commerce" now.
	</p>
	<p>
	While the past adoption of e-commerce was determined by the
	availability of "on-premise", proprietary software solutions developed
	by a handful software vendors, todays vendor landscape looks different:
	It spans from low end, easy to deploy yet inflexible open source
	solutions to ISP based "SaaS" offerings. Which seems to be good a good
	fit for some user groups is certainly a thread for others who want to
	explore new business opportunities outside of their vendor's radar.
	Coming from such a background, we recognize the need for a dynamic,
	flexible and extensible platform which is capable of hosting e-commerce
	sites varying from a few to thousands of visitors and transactions per
	day. Flexibility and extensibility in today's e-commerce depends on a
	software vendor's roadmap, which is often determined by "the least
	common denominator" of potential users. Quick, unconditional
	provisioning of new features, feature updates or custom extensions
	- preferably with zero downtime - is hard to find.
	</p>
	<p>
	Organizations who seek new, competitive e-commerce processes do
	experience that adopting e-commerce is not as easy as download, unzip
	and run. Besides sticking to the vendor's product strategy and having to
	pay extensive maintenance fees, many custom requirements can be
	integrated by finding a compromise between the software vendor's feature
	roadmap and their own requirements. Having said this, if organizations want to
	leverage the R&D efforts and development of current e-commerce
	vendors of any kind, they will certainly accept these compromises. But
	organizations who want to explore innovative e-commerce initiatives and
	at the same time rely on standardized components supported by a large
	user group will barely find a solution today. They have to develop for
	themselves a custom and proprietary solution which has high
	maintenance efforts and will be constrained by high ongoing development
	efforts.
	</p>
	<p>
	While we have discussed the different user groups, also the bespoken
	software vendors are struggling with legacy platforms which are hard to
	maintain, extend and customize. Seeking a new technology platform to
	develop a product offering, whether it is SaaS or on-premise, is a
	gamble. What is the hottest technology today, can be outdated tomorrow.
	Technology platform vendors coming and going and what seems to be a wide
	choice is finally a selection between a couple of big software vendors
	with very high fees, slow feature adoption and no interest in
	e-commerce vendor specific needs. There is a development environment
	needed, which allows e-commerce software vendors to develop their own suites
	of products for their client base, combining it with other
	technology and providing the right "runtime" environment for custom
	development, high performance and scalability with low cost operations
	and maintenance.
	</p>
	<p>
	The Equinox Runtime provides a highly dynamic environment for building
	component oriented applications. Equinox and CODA (Component Oriented
	Development and Assembly) is a proven component model which is also
	perfectly suited for building flexible, dynamic and extensible
	enterprise solutions. We therefore aim to bring this model into the
	e-commerce domain. E-commerce has been and still is one of the fastest
	growing sectors in the Internet.
	</p>

	<h2>Description</h2>
	<p>
	The CloudFree Commerce Platform is an open, dynamic and extensible
	platform for e-commerce solutions of all kind. By using Equinox and CODA
	we define a new platform that is designed from the beginning to gain
	leverage from the key advantages of Equinox and CODA - flexibility,
	extensibility and community.
	</p>
	<p>
	CloudFree will support small, to medium, to large e-commerce sites by
	providing a scalable architecture. It will be useful for standard
	e-commerce shops to sell and merchandise goods as well as any public
	organization who wants to leverage the Internet as a communication and
	transaction channel, and for any organization who encourages their (potential)
	users to perform a transaction, whether this is an order, an
	application, online registration or content download provisioning. It
	will be accessible and easy to use for small organizations, large
	enterprises with multi-dimensional e-commerce initiatives or as a
	technology platform for software vendors. It will allow users to build and
	publish third party components which can be used and refined by all
	associated users.
	</p>
	<p>
	No focus is set on a specific feature implementation technology. The
	CloudFree concept will be extensible and pluggable so that it can be
	exchanged and adapted from a standalone server deployment to a
	large-scale enterprise cluster consisting of many nodes spread across
	different locations. It grows with the user's needs and can be maintained
	by anyone who is familiar with the Eclipse environment. By that it gets
	the large support of the community to conquer the most complex
	e-commerce scenarios and use cases. Organizations who decide to develop
	their e-commerce processes in CloudFree will have the development
	standards of the Eclipse community, the ideas of many contributors and
	the reliability of proven e-commerce modules at hand.
	</p>
	<p>
	The CloudFree Commerce Platform will develop infrastructure, components,
	and services that will support development, provisioning and operation
	of e-commerce solutions of all kind including content transactions. The
	essential functional elements of CloudFree 1.0 are well understood by
	domain experts. While there is significant engineering effort required,
	we feel that the work plan as proposed here can be implemented given
	sufficient and experienced resources, and does not involve an
	unrealistic level of technical risk. Consequently we propose this
	project be considered as an incubator within the Technology top-level project.
	</p>

	<h2>Project Principles</h2>
	<p>
	Among the key principles on which this project has been initiated, and will be run, are the following:
	<ul>
	<li>
	<b>Leverage Eclipse Ecosystem</b> - A major goal of this project is to
	apply the application development strengths of the Eclipse Project to
	the e-commerce domain. The project will work closely with other Eclipse
	project areas whenever possible to leverage the capabilities being
	developed in those areas.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Vendor Neutral</b> - We aim to encourage Eclipse participation and
	drive Eclipse market acceptance by providing vendor-neutral capabilities
	and to encourage participation for complementary capabilities through
	additional projects.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Open, Standards-based Development</b> - Where market adopted
	standards exist that meet the design goals, our aim is to leverage and
	adhere to them. Where market adopted standards do not exist, we will
	develop and publish any new capabilities in the Eclipse open forum.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Incremental Delivery</b> - In order to meet the pent-up demand for a
	standardized platform for e-commerce solutions, we aim to deliver
	functionality to the market as rapidly as possible via an incremental
	delivery model.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Invite Users</b> - During project execution we are going to work
	with potential user groups to understand the current needs even better
	and get guidelines for further priotization of work. The group will have
	its own schedule, but will actively seek for and involve potential
	users.
	</li>
	</ul>
	</p>
	<p>

	<h2>CloudFree Vision</h2>
	<p>
	The key vision on which this platform is based upon is:
	<ul>
	<li>
	<b>No Clouds</b> - It must be a pleasure to work with the platform,
	develop for and extend it, operate it and provide solutions on it.
	</li>
	</ul>
	</p>
	<p>
	Among the principles behind this vision are the following:
	<ul>
	<li>
	<b>Development Modularity & Extensibility</b> - Everything will
	be build as components, can be developed and deployed individually, by the
	community, project committers and partners.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Solution Flexibility</b> - The platform, its components and
	services will be open to new markets, market changes and must adapt to
	business requirements.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Operational Simplicity</b> - Easy provisioning into data centers
	combined with smart and simple, but not simplistic, administration and
	monitoring is a key element in making the platform operation a pleasure.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Cheap Scalability</b> - It is important to grow
	with  clients and support a scalability model from the ground up.
	<br><br>
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Stackability</b> - Platform, modules and components can be put
	together in packages by third parties to allow easy deployment and
	shipment - this saves time and effort.
	</li>
	</ul>
	</p>

	<h2>Project Scope</h2>
	<p>
	The CloudFree Commerce Platform will develop infrastructure, components,
	services, and tools that will support development, provisioning and
	operation of e-commerce solutions or e-commerce development
	environments. Development of a fully-fledged e-commerce solution is
	out-of-scope of this project. Instead, we will focus on the runtime
	infrastructure and core components which are essential for building
	e-commerce solutions or e-commerce products. Additionally, exemplary
	services will be provided which demonstrate the extensibility and
	flexibility of the CloudFree Commerce Platform.
	</p>
	<p>
	The CloudFree Commerce Platform Project will initially focus on the
	following components and exemplary services.
	<ul>
	<li>
	<b>Inventory, Customer & Order Service</b> - A set of "core" services
	typically required by e-commerce sites. These services will allow users to
	define, manage and retrieve products, customers and orders.
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Exemplary Storefront Site</b> - Typically, storefronts are tailored
	to merchant needs. They may be deeply integrated into portals and
	provide rich dynamic content. Therefore, only an exemplary storefront
	will be created which demonstrates the usage and integration with the
	services provided by the platform.
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Contextual Runtime</b> - This is a central model for establishing a
	"context" for building multi-tenant applications offered as SaaS.
	Typically, certain aspects in a SaaS system will not be static. For
	example, the availability of extension X of a service may depend on a
	service level agreement of the tenant using that service.
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Clustering & Monitoring Service</b> - With scalability and
	operational simplicity in mind, the clustering service will enable
	multiple installations to form an application cluster and provide
	operators with a management interface. Monitoring will be built into the
	platform as an essential concept and will also provide integration and
	extension points.
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Admin Service</b> - A central administration interface provided by
	the platform. The service will also provide extension points to allow
	extenders to integrate nicely with the platform.
	</li>
	<li>
	<b>Provisioning Tool</b> - A utility for provisioning updates and new
	components across installations in a cluster in an automated and
	controlled way.
	</li>
	</ul>
	</p>
	<p>
	Outside the project's scope will be the development of vendor-specific
	integrations, such as integrations with specific ERP or CRM systems, as
	well as highly specialized services, such as a sophisticated product
	recommendation service. However, the CloudFree platform will provide
	frameworks and extension points to allow third parties building such
	integrations and specialized services.
	</p>
	<h2>Relationship with other Eclipse Projects</h2>
	<p>
	The CloudFree Commerce Platform project will be build on top of Equinox.
	Eclipse projects which provide useful required technologies and
	functionalities, including Riena, EclipseLink, and ECF, are candidates that the
	CloudFree Commerce Platform codebase might depend upon.
	</p>
	<h2>Organization</h2>
	<p>
	We propose this project should be undertaken as a Technology project. Being
	a Technology project gives it room to experiment without disruption to other
	Eclipse Platform development work. Finally, since Technology sub-projects
	are not meant to be ongoing, we foresee three possible evolutionary paths
	for the subproject:
	<ol>
	<li>
	The project is moved to a permanent state as a Runtime project.
	</li>
	<li>
	The project is moved to a permanent state under a new "SaaS" top-level
	project.
	</li>
	<li>
	The technology proves to be insufficient for Eclipse and the work is set
	aside.
	</li>
	</ol>
	</p>
	<p>
	These paths are not mutually exclusive. Some combination of some or all of
	these paths may be the result of the work done in this project.<br id=yxif>
	</p>
	<p>

	<h2>Interested Parties</h2>
	<p>
	<a href=http://www.ageto.de/ id=j43l title="AGETO Service GmbH">AGETO
	Service GmbH</a>, as the
	submitter of this proposal, welcomes interested parties to post to the
	<a href="http://www.eclipse.org/newsportal/thread.php?group=eclipse.cloudfree" title="eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup">eclipse.cloudfree newsgroup</a>
	and ask to be added to the list as interested parties or to
	suggest changes to this document.
	</p>
	<p>
	<b>Initial Committers</b><br>
	<ul>
	<li>
	Gunnar Wagenknecht, Project Lead (AGETO Service GmbH)
	</li>
	<li>
	Ronny Schmidt, Committer (AGETO Service GmbH)
	</li>
	<li>
	Ralph Spickermann, Committer (AGETO Service GmbH)
	</li>
	<li>
	Frank Rub, Committer (igniti GmbH)
	</li>
	<li>
	Christian Günzl, Committer (igniti GmbH)
	</li>
	</ul>
	</p>
	<p>
	<b>Interested Companies</b><br>
	<ul>
	<li>AGETO Service GmbH, Jena (Germany)</li>
	<li>igniti GmbH, Jena (Germany)</li>
	<li>TowerByte e.G., Jena (Germany)</li>
	<li>PlanetEye Inc., Toronto (Canada)</li>
	<li>Weigle Wilczek GmbH, Esslingen (Germany)</li>
	</ul>
	</p>
	<h3>Code Contributions</h3>
	<p>
	Gunnar Wagenknecht is offering a CloudFree prototype as an initial codebase.
	The prototype is built with proposed concepts in mind and will be used as a
	potential codebase.
	</p>
	<h2>Tentative Plan</h2>
	<p>
	Development is ongoing and a first demonstrable showcase is planned for
	November 2008. This prototype will demonstrate key concepts such as
	extensibility and provisioning. It will be used to socialize community
	feedback and to make a decision on the ongoing development. In case of
	significant community interest the development continues following an
	Eclipse iterative development approach with version 1.0 scheduled for
	Q4/2009.
	</p>

	</div>
	</div>
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