May 2018

The Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) project aims to speed implementation of Linux-based civil infrastructure systems, build upon existing open source foundations and expertise, establish de facto standards by providing a base layer reference implementation, and contribute to and influence upstream projects regarding industrial needs. CIP is driven by some of the world’s leading manufacturers of civil infrastructure systems and industry leaders including Codethink, Hitachi, Plat’Home, Renesas, Siemens, Moxa and Toshiba.

This spotlight series highlights CIP members and how they are contributing to open source software solutions that will benefit the world’s technical systems. Today, we highlight Moxa in a conversation with SZ Lin, a Software Supervisor.

What does your company do?

Moxa is a leading provider of industrial networking, computing, and automation solutions for enabling the Industrial Internet of Things. With 30 years of industry experience, Moxa has connected more than 30 million devices worldwide and has a distribution and service network that reaches customers in more than 70 countries.

Moxa offers a full spectrum of innovative, high-quality solutions that have been deployed in a wide variety of industries, including factory automation, smart rail, smart grid, intelligent transportation, oil and gas, and marine.

I am currently leading an embedded Linux team that helps develop industrial-grade Linux distribution to adapt the Linux for various products especially the industrial related computing systems. For more information about Moxa’s ARM-based Linux Platforms, click here.

Why is your company investing in an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software?

There are lots of industrial Linux products in Moxa. In order to fulfill the goal of long-term support; we need to align the kernel version and focus the resources to maintain it.

CIP aims to speed implementation of Linux-based civil infrastructure systems, build upon existing open source foundations and expertise, establish de facto standards by providing a base layer reference implementation, and contribute to and influence upstream projects regarding industrial needs.

As such, we think the best solution is to build an industrial base layer via cross-enterprise collaboration, because every company has similar problems. We can reduce the maintenance effort, exchange our knowledge and make the product better.

Why did your company join CIP?

We’ve been interested in CIP for a long time – even before Moxa joined the project in January 2018. Every solution Moxa creates offers reliability, safety and is easy to integrate. We believe CIP will help us ensure high-quality software components that will address the long-term needs of smart cities and the future of manufacturing.

How are you currently active in CIP?

We share knowledge and collaborate with other members in the Technical Steering Committee to help determine technical policy and strategic decisions for CIP. Additionally, Moxa has formed a team to help maintain the CIP kernel. This team reviews and discusses the kernel patch with CIP members.

What benefits have you seen or what do you expect to achieve?

Building secure, robust and long-term support products.

Since Moxa provides industry solutions for Rail, ITS, Smart Grid, Marine and Oil & Gas, we need to offer industrial-grade platform and product with long-term stable, secure and robust features. We believe that the CIP base layer is the best for such applications.

Where do you see civil infrastructure systems in 20 years?

The explosion of IoT has made the issue of cybersecurity more important than ever. If there is a security attack, there will be massive damage in civil infrastructure systems, some that we might not recover from. This is why CIP is so important –  it address the needs and security of long-term software for the power generation and distribution, water, oil and gas, transportation and building automation industries.

Register now for Open Source Summit Japan. Click here. 

Next month, more than 1,000 open source enthusiasts, developers and influencers will visit Tokyo for The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit – Japan. Open Source Summit Japan is the leading conference connecting the open source ecosystem under one roof, providing a forum for technologists and open source industry leaders to collaborate and share information, learn about the latest in open source technologies and find out how to gain a competitive advantage by using innovative open solutions.

The event, which takes place June 20-22, will cover the open source technologies with sub-conferences LinuxCon, ContainerCon and CloudOpen; help ecosystem leaders to navigate open source transformation with tracks on business and compliance; and explore the newest technologies and latest trends touching open source, including networking, serverless, edge computing and AI.

This year, developers will have the opportunity to learn about the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) and how to get involved with industry leaders such as Codethink, Hitachi, Moxa, Plat’Home, Renesas, Siemens and Toshiba.

Attendees can stop by CIP’s booth in the sponsor showcase and experience interactive demos from Hitachi, Plat’home and Renesas. Leaders from the project will be on-site to answer questions, discuss the importance of industrial grade open source software and how it impacts the city of the future.

If seeing CIP in action at the booth isn’t enough, there are two CIP-focused sessions at the conference as well:

• Agustín Benito Bethencourt, Principal Consultant at CodeThink and active CIP TSC member, will share a technical summary for CIP on Wednesday, June 20 at 3:10 – 3:50 pm. He’ll discuss Long Term Support (LTS) the 4.4 Linux kernel, the extensive testing the kernel goes through and the impact of all the technical activity that increases long term maintenance. To learn more about this session or to add it to your schedule, click here.
• Yoshitake Kobayashi, Senior Manager of Open Source Technology Department for Toshiba and chair of the CIP Technical Steering Committee (TSC), will present an overview for CIP that shares progress CIP has made since inception two years ago and discuss CIP’s roadmap and the future of the project on Friday, June 22 at 4:20 – 5 pm. To learn more about this session or to add it to your schedule, click here.

Additionally, CIP member Wolfgang Mauerer, Senior Key Expert and Professor for Siemens AG and active TSC member, will provide best practices and guidelines for embedded linux quality assurance on Thursday, June 21 at 4 – 4:40 pm. He’ll share tips designing and running automated statistical tests that capture relevant information, how to properly evaluate the resulting data and common mistakes in over-interpreting statistical results and predictions. To learn more about the session or to add it to your schedule, click here.   

If you haven’t registered for your OSS-Japan yet, use CIP’s community code “OSSJ18SPN20” and you’ll receive 20% off your pass. We hope to see you in Japan!