Press Room

Playing a future-forward, pivotal role in enabling distributed communications across complex applications

BOSTON, MA – MARCH 18, 2024 – Today, the DDS Foundation announced the 20th anniversary of the Data Distribution Service™ (DDS™) Specification. DDS is an open data connectivity standard that helps CIOs, system architects, software engineers and developers to deliver real-time data throughout their business critical IoT systems. The Object Management Group®️ (OMG®️) maintains, optimizes, and evolves the family of DDS Specifications via its rigorous standards processes.

Over the past two decades, DDS has played a pivotal role in transforming distributed communications across complex applications, ranging from the US Navy to unmanned aerial vehicles to self-driving cars to medical robotics and more. The DDS family of standards has empowered the next generation of applications to operate reliably, swiftly, interoperability, and securely, regardless of distance or scale.

“Prior to the adoption of the DDS specification, there were two commercially available middleware products that used publish/subscribe communication,” said Nick Stavros, VP of Technology for the DDS Foundation. “However, these products were proprietary and did not offer standardized interfaces and behaviors. The DDS specification defines the standardized interfaces and behaviors that enable application portability. Not only has DDS survived these two decades, but it has proved to be the foundational data backbone for intelligent, autonomous systems that rely on rapid, scalable and interoperable information exchange. ”

From the original DDS 1.0 specification, there have been continuous expansion and updates. Today there are 14 specifications in the DDS standard that encompass functionality ranging from security to RTPS to OPC UA to TSN interoperability.

The DDS Foundation is hosting a year-long celebration of the DDS Specification, with monthly webinars and other events. On March 20th, OMG will celebrate the DDS 20^th anniversary at its member meeting in Reston VA, with a panel discussion entitled the Past, Present and Future of DDS.

For more information, please visit the DDS Foundation.

About the DDS Foundation

The DDS Foundation is a non-profit group formed by OMG® to advance the use of DDS™ in high-performance and distributed applications. The Foundation governs a global community of vendors, users, government institutions, and universities to realize the potential of the DDS standard in all industries. Foundation members ensure the ongoing and long-term growth and success of DDS through the following: testing conformance and interoperability, defining industry-specific data models, promoting industry-specific adaptations and implementations of DDS, developing user case libraries, and launching educational initiatives. Visit the DDS Foundation website.

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