JADE: a versatile run-time for distributed applications on mobile terminals and networks

As a consequence of the introduction of always-connected wireless networks (GPRS, UMTS, WLAN) and of the continuous growth in power and resources of handheld devices, wireless and wire-line environments are progressively integrating with each other. Agent technology and the peer-to-peer communication paradigm respond very well to the needs of new distributed mobile applications that benefit from distributing intelligence and information on the devices. This paper focuses on JADE, an open source agent oriented middleware that allows reducing the time-to-market for the deployment of hybrid peer-to-peer applications in the wireless world, and describes its characteristics in terms of flexibility, sociability, reliability and interoperability. All these features, extensively tested by an ever-growing community of users, make JADE mature enough to be adopted by the business industry to deploy mobile applications in an open environment.