Panel Discussion: Interoperability Challenges for 2011

Monday, February 7 — 11:30 - 12:45

Interoperability has always been a major challenge for developers and users of IT systems. The nature of that challenge is always changing. Old problems are solved by advances in technology and architectural practice but, at the same time, new problems emerge. In this panel session, leaders of different Open Group activities related to interoperability will discuss the big outstanding and emerging interoperability issues for 2011.

Before the advent of the Internet, establishing data communication between different kinds of IT system was the big interoperability challenge. That problem was solved - brilliantly - but a new problem emerged, of "silo" applications which, even though they could communicate with each other, could not meaningfully exchange information.

XML has helped to enable application interoperability at the syntactic level, and service orientation, with formalised service descriptions, has helped to introduce some procedural interoperability. So we have solved some more interoperability problems. But it is still much harder than it should be to make different IT systems interoperate within an enterprise architecture.

Now, Cloud Computing is bringing major changes to the technology landscape, that must be addressed. And the nature of enterprises is changing. Boundarylessness, and the importance of ecosystems involving muktiple enterprises, is increasing. This brings a much greater requirement for IT systems interoperation within and between enterprises.

What are today's problems? Can the IT community solve them, and meet the growing requirements for interoperability? Come to the panel session, hear the opinions of the experts, and input your views to the discussion!

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