The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (Wikipedia, Organization About Page) is a German research organization that focuses on applied science (cf. the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft for basic research). Our latest Adoption Story describes how Metro and GlassFish were used in the Reference Implementation used in an e-Health initiative across multiple hospital organizations. Check the details at Chris' Electronic Case Record note.

I had never heard of the Frauhofer Society but turns out they are fairly large (58 institutes with over 12K people) and well regarded with contributions to areas like MP3. Their funding includes state contributions as well as contract work; it is named after Joseph von Fraunhofer.

Afga, ICW and Sun have launched the Open eHealth initiative to leverage Open Source in the Health industry. Open eHealth's goal is to create a community-driven software development platform to speed up the digitization of the healthcare industry, with emphasis on delivering interoperable, standards-based solutions.

The service components will extend existing open source projects such as OpenESB, Glassfish, OpenSSO and Mural. More details in the Press Release and at the Open eHealth WebSite.

The big shift in the IT industry created by Open Source is accelerating. I have a biased perspective, but I strongly believe that Sun's strengths, size, and position will allow it to capitalize on and speed up the transition to this brave new world. I've a feeling we are not in Kansas anymore....