IBM Adds 13 New Members to OpenAJAX Group

IBM‘s new initiative to build an open source community around AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development technologies continues to grow. Last week, IBM added 13 new members, including Adobe, SAP, and TIBCO, to its OpenAJAX community, bringing the total number of participants to 28.

IBM created OpenAJAX in February 2006 as a way to expand the adoption of AJAX and evolve AJAX tools and runtime environments. OpenAJAX members are planning a summit this month to discuss the present usage of AJAX, its growth into new markets, and to create a business and technical roadmap for moving toward a “more universal” AJAX for desktop and mobile devices.

AJAX technologies show a lot of promise for SAP users, says Ike Nassi, senior vice president at SAP Research Americas. “We look forward to efforts like OpenAJAX providing a consistent and productive AJAX environment that SAP customers and partners need to obtain maximum value from these new technologies.”

Membership in IBM’s OpenAJAX reads like a veritable who’s-who of enterprise and Web development. Founding members include: BEA, Borland, Google, Mozilla, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, and Zend Technologies.

However, there’s trouble on the horizon, and IBM’s OpenAJAX initiative is not to be confused with a similar sounding group of the same name, which was created in January by Canadian software developer Furi Enterprises, and which operates a Web site at www.openajax.ca . (At this point in time, IBM’s OpenAJAX initiative does not appear to have a Web site–but if there were a Web site, we’re sure it would be AJAX enabled.)

Just for fun, there appears to be a third OpenAJAX group, which claims to have been established in May 2005, operating at www.openajax.net. This proliferation of competing open standards AJAX groups seems anathema to cause of the standards-loving Web developers. Perhaps competition will create a “more universal” AJAX than collaboration could? Maybe pigs will fly?