OpenAJAX Alliance, an open industry collaboration dedicated to developing and expanding AJAX, today announced AJAXWorld Conference & Expo in New York City that its membership has grown to 72 with the addition of Microsoft Corporation and 30 other companies.  

“Microsoft is joining the OpenAJAX Alliance to collaborate with other industry leaders to help evolve AJAX-style development by ensuring a high degree of interoperability,” said Keith Smith, group product manager of the Core Web Platform & Tools to UX Web/Client Platform & Tools team at Microsoft Corp. “By joining OpenAJAX, Microsoft is continuing its commitment to empower Web developers with technology that works cross-browser and cross-platform.”

The newest OpenAjax Alliance members include: 24SevenOffice, ActiveGrid, ActiveState, Appeon, Aptana, Arimaan Global Consulting, Custom Credit Systems (Thinwire), ESRI, Getahead (DWR), Global Computer Enterprises, GoETC, Helmi Technologies, HR-XML, iPolipo, Isomorphic Software, JSSL, Lightstreamer, Microsoft, MobileAware, NetScript Technologies, OpenSpot, OpenSymphony (OpenQA), OpSource, OS3.IT, Redmonk, Tealeaf Technology, Teleca Mobile, Transmend, Visible Measures, Visual WebGui and Volantis Systems.

The Alliance is also announcing that the following members have all been awarded OpenAjax Interoperability certificates: Apache XAP, Dojo Foundation, ICEsoft, ILOG, Isomorphic, IT Mill, Lightstreamer, Open Link, Open Spot, Nexaweb, Software AG and TIBCO. The interoperability certificates represent progress by both OpenAjax Alliance and its members towards defining and achieving industry support for OpenAjax Conformance.

The term OpenAjax Conformance is shorthand for the set of requirements that OpenAjax Alliance will be placing on Ajax technologies, products, and applications. These requirements focus on a small number of simple but important aspects of Ajax deployment, thereby providing the critical bits of Ajax interoperability that customers require.  The conformance criteria are being designed in a manner that allows Ajax suppliers to continue to innovate and move forward with new technologies and products in an open platform.  

OpenAjax Conformance will provide the following benefits to IT managers and the Ajax developer community:

• Seamless integration of multiple Ajax products and technologies within the same Web application, particularly with applications that use mashup techniques

• Greater certainty about product choices and reliability

• Lower training costs, lower development costs, and faster delivery of Web 2.0 innovations due to industry adoption of common approaches that build from OpenAjax standards

• Interchangeability of OpenAjax Conformant products, such that customers can choose among multiple vendors (and change vendors in the future)

"After only 10 months this organization has achieved significant milestones in defining interoperability standards for the industry, the membership has grown from 13 to over 70 and the alliance has published multiple white papers on the background technology and business benefits of Ajax," said David Boloker, OpenAjax Steering Committee Chairman. "The group has also established task forces to investigate possible areas of new activity in security, IDE integration, server integration and client-side server communications.  Our end-goal with all of these activities is to increase adoption and provide value to the software community on both technical and marketing fronts."

OpenAjax Alliance recently published a revised set of white papers, including a new article titled -- When Does Ajax Make Business Sense -- which can be found at www.openajax.org.  The new article states that the benefits derived from Ajax come from more interactive and productive connections between users and Web-based applications. Beyond better user interfaces for existing applications, Ajax enables new classes of applications that fall under the umbrella term "Web 2.0" and that also fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA). According to the article, among the next-generation Ajax tools that will power the enterprise and the Internet of the future, include the following:

• Users as co-developers - New Ajax-powered environments, such as "application wikis," are empowering users to create their own customized mashups that include personalized dashboards and situational composite applications.

• Collaboration - Ajax technologies are typically the centerpiece of Web 2.0 information collection and sharing environments that harness the collective intelligence of disparate communities.

• Software above the level of a single device - Web 2.0 is accelerating the movement from installable desktop applications to Web-based applications, thereby leveraging the advantages of networks and information sharing.

• Cross-device applications and mobility - Simultaneous with the adoption of Web 2.0 is the growing proliferation of Web-capable mobile devices. Ajax technologies enable Web 2.0 applications across both large-screen desktops and small-screen mobile devices.
  
  OpenAjax Membership Growth

The existing group of Alliance members include: Adobe, The Ajaxian, American Greetings, BEA, Curl, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, edge IPK, eLink Business Innovations, Finetooth, The Front Side, IBM, ICEsoft, Ikivo, ILOG, Innoopract, IT Mill, JackBe, Javeline, JWAX, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Nexaweb, Nitobi, Novell, Open Link Software, Openwave Systems, Opera, Oracle, SAP, Scalix, Seagull Software, Sitepen, Software AG, Sun Microsystems, Tibco, Vertex Logic, Webtide, XML11, Zend, Zimbra and Zoho.

Ajax Conformance Award Recipient Quotes

Apache XAP (at Apache Incubator)
“Apache XAP is the declarative Ajax runtime at Apache Software Foundation,” says Robert Buffone, a committer at Apache XAP project, “Adding support for OpenAjax Hub brings XAP a step closer to its vision of enabling developers to plug in their favorite Ajax widgets and toolkits while utilizing a unified open declarative framework to dramatically simplify Ajax application development.”  

Dojo Foundation
“The open source Dojo Toolkit is one of the industry's most popular and comprehensive Ajax development platforms. The Dojo Foundation was a charter member of OpenAjax Alliance and serves on the OpenAjax Alliance Steering Committee. We are excited to demonstrate support for the OpenAjax Hub within Dojo,” Dylan Schiemann, chief executive at Web application design and development firm SitePen and co-founder of the Dojo Foundation.

ICEsoft
“We are pleased to demonstrate ICEfaces compatibility with the Open Ajax Hub,” says Ken Fyten, VP Product Development at ICEsoft Technologies. “This confirms our commitment to the Open Ajax Alliance and to our customers that want the flexibility to incorporate other Ajax libraries into their ICEfaces Ajax applications.”

ILOG
"The approaching one-year anniversary of the OpenAjax Alliance is an important milestone for Ajax technology and the community. ILOG is proud to have been there from the start, and based on the overwhelming demand from our customer base for Ajax-enhanced graphical displays, we are excited to participate in the OpenAjax InteropFest and to continue to contribute to this flourishing ecosystem with open and interoperable technologies," said Jean François Abramatic, Chief Product Officer, ILOG.

Isomorphic
"Years before the term AJAX was coined, our customers demanded interoperability with other early AJAX technologies as part of the process of integrating SmartClient into commercial portal servers and other enterprise products." said Charles Kendrick, CTO of Isomorphic Software.  "And we delivered.  Isomorphic remains committed to AJAX interoperability, and we are excited to see the industry make strides toward interoperability standards.  Our customers value Isomorphic's ability to immediately embrace emerging industry standards via SmartClient's flexible and extensible architecture."

IT Mill
"OpenAjax Hub is one of the key components that allow easier integration in future", said Joonas Lehtinen, CEO of IT Mill. "IT Mill Toolkit 4.0 enables Java programmers to create solid enterprise user interfaces on top of Ajax technologies and OAA Hub will help to integrate it better into other applications. We are excited that our  product is one of the first ones to pass the compliance tests."

Lightstreamer
"We are pleased to have passed the InteropFest test and we are committed to further OpenAjax Hub specification adherence" said Alessandro Alinone, CTO at Lightstreamer, "Our goal is not to compete in the general AJAX toolkit market, but to remain focused on the delivery of a scalable and reliable Push Server that can work with any AJAX solution."

OpenSpot
"The technologies developed by the OpenAjax alliance let toolkit libraries from different vendors work together within a web application," said Gideon Lee, president of OpenSpot. "At a higher level, virtual desktop technologies such as our open source SameDesk environment let applications delivered from different sites interact across domain boundary at the browser. These two complementary types of technologies will help narrow the gap between desktop and web applications, thereby creating more flexible alternatives for the developers and the end users."

Nexaweb
“Nexaweb Universal Client Framework supports Ajax, Java  as well as offline web computing for Enterprise Web 2.0 applications. ” Coach Wei, CTO at Nexaweb Technologies, Inc., “As a key contributor to various open source projects and a member of the Steering Committee of OpenAjax Alliance, Nexaweb is excited to announce the support for OpenAjax Hub in its Universal Client Framework offering”.

Software AG
"As a global provider of mission-critical software infrastructure solutions, we are very pleased to see the increasing momentum and the significant progress of the OpenAjax Alliance," said Dr. Peter Kuerpick, Member of the Board of Software AG and responsible for Crossvision. "We believe that businesses are expecting solutions that are manageable, interoperable and open. Already a leader in SOA Governance, Software AG is proud to be one of the first companies that have an OpenAjax conformant offering for building rich SOA front ends."

TIBCO
“Ajax interoperability standards are critical to our customers’ enterprise Ajax implementations – TIBCO’s OpenAjax Conformance certificate reduces their technical risks and enables them to leverage existing skill sets,” said Kevin Hakman, director General Interface product marketing, TIBCO. “Interoperability standards also open up the Ajax eco-system so anyone can create new components that can predictably work with literally dozens of OpenAjax Conformant toolkits. The OpenAjax Alliance provides developers and their management with a reliable way to mix and match Ajax pieces and parts from multiple projects and vendors to efficiently build and maintain their solutions.”

About OpenAjax Alliance
The OpenAjax Alliance is an organization of leading vendors, open source projects, and companies using Ajax that are dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based Web technologies.  The prime objective of the group is to accelerate customer success with Ajax by promoting a customer's ability to mix and match solutions from Ajax technology providers and to help drive the future of the Ajax ecosystem. To learn more about OpenAjax Alliance, please visit: www.openajax.org