Abiquo’s middleware soon available in Windows

We aim to have a platform-independent product so it became necessary to develop a portable version for Windows. Currently, Abiquo’s middleware runs over Cygwin (which is not the best solution :))

One of our principles is avoiding developing and maintaining any environment or project that already exists. We won’t spend our time reinventing the wheel! (in the open source world, we mean). Therefore, we downloaded; studied and evaluated the two nowadays most used portable projects: Apache Portable Runtime Project and Netscape Portable Runtime. Both offer complete, interesting and useful portable options for Linux developers.

However, we finally decided to implement our own portable runtime :). And we did that to maintain our best middleware skill: the small 300k binary file. Even if the two portable options are excellent developments; they would duplicate the extension of the binary file.

Abiquo’s middleware has its critical modules in HashMap, Threads and Sockets. In order to adapt the Threads we needed the pthreads-win32 project as dependence. Winsockets has its own implementation and we only had to adapt the source code for the SocketServer class. So, finally, we made and abstract layer for a Windows Hashmap.

You’ll be able to download and try this Windows version in the new version of the Abiquo platform (coming soon…)

Tags: Abiquo, Apache, Middleware, netscape, windows

New community tool: IRC Chat

Now, you can talk with us on #abiquo channel on irc.freenode.net server.

See you there to solve your doubts :)

Tags: Abiquo, chat, community, irc

Futurlink in a box

Abiquo has began a project with Futurlink, the leader in marketing management for mobile devices.

Abiquo helps the costumer with the integration of its products with virtual machine technologies.

The main idea and benefits is that Futurlink will be able to use and develop new features of its marketing management products in heterogeneos environments and markets where nowadays it’s difficult to appear.

Tags: Abiquo, futurlink, VirtualBox, virtualization

AbiCloud: the cloud computing of Abiquo

If a Cloud is not a Grid where does abiquo fit? Abiquo is taken from the Ubiquity definition, and regarding cloud computing the keys are abstraction and availability, so yes we do fit!

We strongly believe an standard is necessary, in this way we agree with the cloud evangelists. That’s where abiCloud is going to try to fill the gap.

First of all, we are focussing in the Cloud Resource Description definition and the Virtual Application Life cycle. OVF and WS-management is our strong bid:

As regarding the administrator interface we chose the GoGrid strategy, make it pretty first and then make it accessible. However, the chosen RIA technology is FLEX.

But that’s just the firsts steps of a big project. The community plays an important role,  so if you are interested send an e-mail to clouding@abiquo.com, ideas, feed-back, suggestions are more than welcomed.

Tags: Abiquo, cloud computing, flex

Our platform is available for download :-)

Just a few lines to announce you that today we have released a beta version of our platform :-)

You can download it from our site: www.abiquo.com

It’s an open source platform for building & managing distributed applications easily. For me, the most distinctive feature is that you can use small devices (routers, smartphones, sensors…) as nodes, due to the small footprint of our middleware.

Now we are finishing different products over it:

• RIA management portal
• abiCloud: [Yes, another competitor in the market] An application to spread services in a cloud, or build them into your company
• abiNtense: A set of tools for boosting the execution of distributed apps (through AI agents) while guaranteeing the security and QoS
• abiData: An implementation of map-reduce for managing terabytes of data in different machines

As a reference, trovit is using our platform for improving their SEO (distributed crawlers, intensive data processing, avoiding html cache…). Another one could be a demo prototype that we made for www.fon.com which is a good approach to the “internet of things”.

Ideas, feed-back, suggestions, even critics, are more than welcome :-)

Tags: Abiquo, platform

A day in the Mountain

Abiquo Team enjoyed this last weekend in the mountain.

The aim of the activity was further enhance and improve the team building :)

We were sleeping in hammocks in the middle of the forest in a place located between Catalonia and South France.

On Saturday morning, it was time to release some adrenaline through some jumping and climbing.

Maybe, it’s better to see some examples:

Tags: Abiquo, team building

Middleware in a box

Imagine you can have a tinny virtual machine with an abiquo middleware exposing its resources to everyone:

• 

  Reduce vulnerability in grid nodes against out of control processes (they can destroy the virtual machine information). Safer for the user.

• Homogeneous execution environment for all nodes.
• Add cloud computing benefits to grid computing benefits.

Imagine you can have a light virtual machine (downloadable from the Internet). Easy to install, multiplatform and featuring all abiquo functionalities.

Last Friday, abiquoLabs accomplished this goal. The first prototype of abiquo Platform over a customized virtualized Linux within a VirtualBox and… this box… in Norway :).

Why we choose VirtualBox? Basically because we believe VirtualBox is the better end user virtualization solution, easier for final users.

After this.. we are starting to think about different cool solutions and user applications… they will be here soon ;)

Tags: Abiquo, Middleware, VirtualBox

But… what is abiquo?

This is a question people are wondering and they always try to ask us.

Cloud Computing? Grid Computing? The Internet of things? M2M?…

The response for abiquoLabs is easy:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Abiquo is an Open Source platform that allows interconnecting ANY KIND OF DEVICE in the same infrastructure to create INTELLIGENT NETWORKS. From huge servers to tiny sensors, from Cloud Computing to Wireless Sensor Networks. Abiquo allows any developer to create his own dream application in an easy way.

Yes, we know that it is a very generic concept but we like big challenges… do you want to help us?

The Open Comunity is comming soon…

Tags: Abiquo, Open Source

Two new costumers for the next quarter

This month we’ll be starting two important projects:

• Trovit , one of the largest vertical search engines will use abiquo platform. Combining the experience of the abiquo team in distributed technologies (Hadoop, Map Reduce, Katta, Bailey, etc) and cloud computing solutions to create a high scalability and high availability system. All monitorized this with a centralized web portal to save management costs.

• On the other hand, abiquo team is launching an ambitious project in Cornellá de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain). The next generation of grid architectures: The Citizen Grid. A software platform that will not only offer Boinc like capabilities but also user interaction, P2P and social network generation.

We are extremely excited with these projects, completely different objectives sharing the very same platform, abiquo platform. We will keep you posted on the advances.

Tags: Abiquo, citilab, citzen, grid, searcher, social networks, trovit

Optimizing water consumption with abiquo

Abiquo Labs (our R+D team) presented a prototype of the m2m platform applied to the water consumption optimization.

Spain is a country where water shortages are becoming a problem and the people are beginning to feel the urgency of improving water consumption to reduce the water needs.

This simple example can be applied to watered gardens on any council in the world :). We used plants to illustrate the case inside the Citilab building.

The technologies:

We need to interact between sensors using Zigbee communication, Bluetooth router, a Bluetooth mobile and web services (Twitter and weather information).

The information generated by the system is displayed to the user on a Flex Application, on the mobile (through a Bluetooth message) or using twitter.

Abiquo platform:

It works like a plug and play system. Using generic connectors developed by abiquo the development is becomes just too easy. The connectors employed are the following:

• Bluetooth connector.
• Zigbee connector.
• Twitter connector.
• Weather connector.

It’s easy to set up (it only takes a few minutes). A developer can connect inputs and outputs almost transparently. He or she does not need to understand Bluetooth, Zigbee or the other technologies. He only connects the data to show the information in the different interfaces.

The schema:

The cool features:

Using the abiquo platform you can obtain the following benefits:

• You can modify the hardware and you don’t need to change the applications.
• You don’t have the hardware dedicated. The devices are connected to the same network and they can be used by other applications.
• Reduce the time to market of your applications and ease code reuse.

Future:

Abiquo is finding industrial partners and public institutions to develop the optimization of water cycle. An ambitious project where abiquo applys its concept of “distributed intelligence“.

The idea is to create a distributed and large wireless sensor network of low-cost sensors to control key places (greens, rivers, drains, etc.), connected to 2.0 webs to sensitize the citizen and connected to water utility industries and public administration to optimize the water consumption.

Please, you can send mail to contact@abiquo.com to ask us about the demo.

Tags: 2.0, Abiquo, bluetooth, m2m, water, web services, zigbee