Eclipse Ditto 1.0 – The Device‑as‑a‑Service Platform for Digital Twin Development

Thomas Jäckle

Thomas Jäckle is a seasoned Software Developer who joined Bosch in 2010. Since 2015 he has led the Bosch IoT Things cloud service, and from 2017 he serves as Committer and Project Lead for Eclipse Ditto. A lifelong advocate of software craftsmanship, Thomas is driven by continuous learning and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Master’s in Application Architecture from Hochschule Furtwangen University, Germany.

A digital twin is the virtual representation of a real‑world entity or system, encapsulating its data model and processes. By mirroring physical objects—such as wind turbines—digital twins enable remote control, predictive maintenance, and advanced analytics. Gartner projects that two‑thirds of enterprises with IoT deployments will introduce digital twins into production.

Digital twins simplify IoT complexity by providing a consistent, interoperable view of physical assets, which accelerates the development of data analysis, simulation, augmented reality, and maintenance services.

When we launched Eclipse Ditto, our mission was to streamline twin creation. We set out to build a flexible framework that manages core data interactions between the physical and virtual worlds, allowing domain experts to focus on twin logic rather than connectivity plumbing.

Eclipse Ditto: A framework for building the bridge between devices and their digital twins.

After extensive requirements gathering, coding, testing, and community feedback, we are thrilled to announce the 1.0 release of Eclipse Ditto. We see Ditto as a device‑as‑a‑service solution that empowers digital twin builders.

Ditto – Device-as-a-Service

Ditto delivers a unified view across diverse devices. At its core lies the Thing data model, representing a physical device. The Thing is exposed through a RESTful API, giving twin experts a single entry point to interact with hardware. Ditto’s services provide:

• Persistent storage and change notifications for device state
• Advanced search across millions of Things
• Payload transformation to a lightweight JSON schema
• Fine‑grained authorization policies via OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect
• Live channels for real‑time device interaction

Device Persistence & Notifications

Ditto records the latest value of each device in a database, enabling twins to query the current state. Applications can subscribe to change events and trigger actions when thresholds are crossed.

Search

Ditto offers powerful search capabilities, allowing queries such as: “List all temperature sensors reporting >20°C” or “Retrieve all twins in a specific location.” These features support dashboards and analytics for large fleets.

Payload Transformations

Ditto is device‑agnostic. It normalizes data from legacy or newly designed devices into a consistent JSON model, ensuring a uniform interface regardless of underlying protocols.

Authorization

Access to Ditto APIs is governed by user‑defined policies, safeguarding device data. Clients authenticate using OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, and permissions can be scoped to specific Thing attributes.

Live Channel

The live channel enables direct command and response flows to devices. Ditto routes requests through the connectivity layer (e.g., Eclipse Hono, MQTT, Azure IoT) while enforcing authorization checks.

Ditto does not embed device drivers; instead, it exposes APIs for web, mobile, and backend services to interact with devices through the live channel.

Ditto 1.0 – Ready for Production

The 1.0 milestone marks a stable, mature API set, a vetted codebase, and a clear semantic‑versioning strategy. Eclipse Foundation’s approval ensures all intellectual property concerns are resolved.

Ditto now scales horizontally to support millions of Things in a clustered environment, making it production‑ready for large‑scale IoT deployments.

Community & Ecosystem

We aim for Ditto to become the industry standard for digital twins. As an open‑source project under the Eclipse IoT working group, Ditto fosters a vendor‑neutral ecosystem.

Companies such as Aloxy, Othermo, and Kiwigrid are already integrating Ditto into their IoT platforms. Aloxy, an Industrial IoT startup, leverages Ditto to offer a unified API for monitoring and interacting with industrial assets.

Join the Community

We invite developers to explore the Ditto sandbox, experiment with sample projects, and contribute via GitHub. If you adopt Ditto, share your experience—we're building a vibrant digital twin community together.