The Eclipse Foundation is an open source community that has devoted itself to developing an extensive software development platform. More than half of all Java developers worldwide already use Eclipse. This currently makes Eclipse one of the most important tools in the area of software development.
For itemis, this strategic decision is a further step towards open source. The company has made a name for itself in the area of Model Driven Architecture and already supports the Eclipse GMF project openArchitectureWare. In addition, itemis is cooperating with the Department of Information Technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund, Germany to develop a unified, Eclipse-based platform for the model-driven development of embedded systems.
"We are very happy about our acceptance into the Eclipse community and will soon be offering an extensive range of training packages and services for Eclipse," comments Wolfgang Neuhaus, CEO of itemis, on this step. "Furthermore, we plan on integrating some of our own products into Eclipse under the open source license. For instance, CM3, an extension for UML tools, which facilitates modeling," says Neuhaus.
itemis has been taking advantage of the Eclipse platform and other open source tools in its consultancy projects for quite a while. The company was recently selected as one of the most innovative among German small and medium-sized businesses for its commitment in the open source community.
"With itemis, we have gained another important partner, who has totally dedicated itself to the open source cause," says Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. "The support of Eclipse provided by German companies such as itemis underscores the growing importance of open source in this market," Milinkovich added.