PLENARY
Boundaryless Information Flow:
Open Standards and Certification

This Conference Plenary focused on the role and value of standards and certification, including what they mean, why they are important to business,and how they are viewed by both suppliers and customers. It discussed the role of consortia and standards bodies in directing and evolving industry standards and certification activity. Presentations and exhibitions of interoperability testing, and certification and testing processes, were featured. In addition, the Conference considered the practical issues of procurement when expressing a preference for products that are certified to conform, and addressed topics such as understanding the difference between product standards and open standards, lowering integration costs, risk mitigation, and improving return on investment with certified products.

The Conference Keynote Address was given by Dawn Meyerriecks, Principal Director for GIG Enterprise Services, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), US Department of Defense. The closing keynote was given by Ron Eller, Vice President, and General Manager, ESS Solution Alliances, Hewlett-Packard Company.

Session 1:
The Role of Standards and Certification – Just what are standards, and why are they important to your business?

Allen welcomed all present to this Conference, and introduced the speakers through the day. They included the views of the government, customers, and vendors, and also other consortia who share our interests in this topic.

Opening Keynote	(1/2)
Dawn Meyerriecks, Principal Director for GIG Enterprise Services, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), US Department of Defense	(2/2)

Ms. Meyerriecks discussed the importance of standards in computing - do standards matter? She illustrated the nature and scale of the DoD requirement by showing a high-level view of the mission thread for battle damage assessment to target the networks and the multiple security levels involved. She added to this the relayed area of responsibility that all this information has to pass through end-to-end.

The success of the DoD approach to managing all this has been demonstrated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The challenge now is that current enterprise-wide infrastructure approaches are aging, and current web services, enterprise application integration, and service-oriented architectures hold promise for the future "agile" infrastructures they need to support the DoD requirements. DISA needs help from places like The Open Group to mature these. To counter the asymmetric threat we need agile net-centric warfare, and this agility can only be achieved in a boundaryless information flow environment. Keys to the agility needed include comprehensive situation awareness, mobility, and service-oriented architecture. The result is new assumptions and imperatives, and their view of them is a net-centric approach. Dawn listed the key net-centric characteristics for them. Their solution is a layered architecture comprising Core Enterprise Services (CES) Information Services, CES operating environment, and CES transformational communications. They need standards for each of these levels, and if those standards are good, then the required agility will be achieved. GIG Enterprise Services will support warrior needs and can also support business users. We should move from systems to services, provide distributed services capabilities, and integrate them into interoperable systems. The aim is to share information across all nodes. Illustrative results are that the most significant benefits are realized when all combat reach capabilities are implemented. Dawn closed by challenging The Open Group members to partner with DISA - technology and standards are mission-critical to them. So she encouraged the audience to emphasize secure interoperability and integration - they have the same needs as enterprise industries; so there is a win-win situation here.

Q: Where does Linux fit into DISA's view? Dawn replied that it is definitely there.

Q: What are the requirements for accepting Linux? Dawn replied they will have baseline test assertions for Linux in place soon; their intent is to use the right tool for the right job. Allen Brown noted that we have Linux Standards Base (LSB) certification in place now and will be supporting further steps that the industry calls for.

Carl O’Berry, Vice President, Strategic Architecture, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems

Carl talked about the operational requirements of the warfighter and how net-centric operations are key to the solution space. He explained that his approach gives a different perspective on the same issues that Dawn Meyerriecks has talked about, but the conclusions are very similar.

Looking at the same issues from a different perspective; he drew analogy with Gray's Anatomy - different medical disciplines look at anatomy from their own speciality perspective. He intends to look at military transformation as a powerful motion, look at the implications of transformation for other venues, and assess the industry role as an enabler/partner in this transformation.

A Boeing advertisement is that a soldier should never be alone - he should be backed up by information systems that keep him well informed. Net-enabled systems are expected to achieve this. To make this happen we need to provide the necessary operational bandwidth for mobile as well as static users - large platforms, with very agile mobile nodes that allow agility for information to flow to all nodes. There are common needs here that are supported by one architecture with several views - the system view (relates capabilities and characteristics to operational requirements), the operational view (identifies customer operations), and the technical view (standards and conventions) - all need to be integrated. The need for information is universal - we have our basic human sensor suite of capabilities - situational awareness and controls in all walks of activities share much in common.

Basic net-centric elements fall into three areas - sensors, decision-makers (receive data, forms meaningful information, provides knowledge, enabling informed wisdom and judgement), and effectors (sometimes with intelligent feedback sensors enabling verification and perhaps variation of the decision). Carl suggested the way ahead - the environment today, then through transformational programs that will enable the required transitions, to the required environment tomorrow. The common denominator is a common open architecture - COTS standards and products - and based on a common reference model in which interoperability resides in communications and information layers, and developers design from the same foundation, and all involved are focused on mission effectiveness. The goal here is not to force everyone to become net-centric, but to provide solutions that enable customers to operate in a net-centric manner.

Why should industry do this? The military does not want to operate as an integrator of gadgets - it wants solutions for global interoperability. Industry can supply integrated solutions and those are what the military wants to buy. Carl gave a few examples of net-centric enablers - net-centric warfare changing the nature of military operations; homeland security enabling federal, state, and local government services to address threats while maintaining agency independence; and air traffic management enabling efficient and safe control of evolving commercial, military, and general aviation operations. In all these the principles are the same - getting information from where you are to where you want it to go with optimum efficiency. Industry's role as a principal enabler involves establishing a common approach, using the best technology, providing the right technical support, and working together on common infrastructure problems. Remember that the customer defines the operational requirement. However, industry takes those requirements and develops them into real business requirements that can be implemented using current and evolving technologies, working with standards bodies, achieving a multiplier effect. Carl close by reminding everyone to keep in mind the goal - create the environment in which no soldier need ever be alone.

Q: The GIG-ES at the domain level does not seem to foster competition. Carl replied that the lower two levels provide the tools and interfaces enable the necessary level of interoperability. He appreciates IPR in commerce, but does not believe that it should be allowed to prevent interoperability - using it for this purpose will in fact probably hurt commercial success.

Session 2:
The Value of Standards and Certification - Who makes them happen and how? The role of Consortia and Standards Bodies in directing and evolving industry standards and certification activity.

Standards and Certification Bodies
James de Raeve, Vice President, Business Development, The Open Group

James noted our Business Scenario on the value of certification that came out of our previous meeting in Washington DC (October 2003), and introduced a few quotes about standards and certification that give sharp reminders on how we are reluctant to trust claims of compliance without supporting evidence. He then introduced a panel of consortia and standards leaders who each gave their view of their role, and then answered audience questions.

OpenGIS
Dr. Carl Reed, Executive Director, Specification Program, OpenGIS Consortium

Dr. Reed explained the vision of the OpenGIS Consortium is a world in which everyone benefits from the use of geographic information and supporting technology services. Much of the issues discussed by the previous speakers on agility of information is affected by geographical location, and mobility of users. He gave the core mission of the OGC, and explained how he believes accomplishment of the OGC mission will enable a geospatial IT community. Their approach on interoperability includes an interoperability program, a specification development program (Dr. Reed's area of responsibility), and an outreach and community adoption program. Compliance testing is key, and the OGC has done compliance testing for several years, but in 2002 some of OGC's members collaborated to set up a Compliance and Interoperability Testing & Evaluation (CITE) interoperability initiative for its Open Web Services (OWS) specifications. Carl explained that the CITE tests are self-administered and freely available and accessible via the OGC's CITE portal. A brand is then available for those who wish to pay the appropriate fee for their product to be validated as conformant. They express a caveat that compliance does not ensure interoperability. Also they appreciate that coordination and harmonization with other bodies is essential.

POSC
David Archer, President and CEO, Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium (POSC)

David presented a list of what is represented as humanity's top ten problems for the next 50 years. Energy is at the top, and it is claimed that if we solve the energy problem then a lot of the other nine problems are significantly eased. David listed some of their main industry drivers of the energy industry. He summarized the major milestones in POSC's history, illustrating how POSC's mission has changed as the energy industry has evolved. He considered that the notion of the battlefield of the future has synergy with the image of the oil industry of the future. We have to change the way we work, and David listed POSC's primary activities and deliverables today, exemplifying how their organization's objective have changed to meet the industry's needs. Form an oil company's perspective, standards are good.

NIST
Dr. Susan Zevin, Acting Director, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Dr. Zevin focused on the contributions that NIST believe they best provide in support of standards and certification. She listed NIST's assets, its extramural programs, and its mission. The Information Technology Laboratory research blueprint boils down to promoting trust and confidence. Testing is a key part of this. NIST's approach to standards is to collaborate with industry and with the business community. They have a Trust & Confidence continuum model. For each of the elements in this model, the measurement model is sub-optimal. Their software testing studies have produced results which show there is much RoI to be gained in improved practice - better specifications and conformance test suites, testing, all leading to better products. A certification case study has also revealed flaws which return significant improvements in quality of products.

OASIS
Jamie Clark, Manager of Technical Standards Development, Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)

Jamie gave an introduction to what OASIS is about. It is best known for its standards work on XML-derivative specifications. He showed the large range of the standards projects that OASIS members are working on and have delivered. Jamie explained that standards affect the cost of e-commerce. Standards provide a level playing field, mitigating user risks, and promoting opportunities for improving interoperability. Key issues are suitability, availability, and reliability. When we embark on standards work we should look at the participants and the process to decide whether the objectives are realistically shared. We also need testable assertions to demonstrate conformance to a standard. However, no amount of testing can guarantee full conformance. It is crucial to maintain the neutrality, control, and market utility of testing.

SNIA
Roger Reich, Senior Technical Director, VERITAS Software; Chair of the Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative; Member of the Board of the DMTF

Roger listed what customers demand for storage management solutions, and how they are frequently shown some path to finding solutions while there is much that has needed resolving. He characterized this situation as the storage management API dilemma, the developers' dilemma in their model infrastructure, and how to express the API requirement. The Storage Management Initiative (SMI) addressed this problem, and resulted in the CTP model and SNIA conformance testing program - a success for both customers and suppliers.

The dialogue in this section of the Plenary is recorded, and can be supplied as a full summary on request to The Open Group Conference Management.

Q: JdR - How does testing and certification work when the applicable standard(s) don't cover enough of what I need?
A: POSC - Don't get bogged down, but do what you can as well as you can.
A: OGC - Need enough standards to solve the key large problems.

Q: Doug Johnson - How can OGC fix problems like the feet/meters issue that was the problem in the previous Mars probe?
A: OGC - Measurements are an interesting issue but no standard can substitute for human error.
A: NIST - There is a huge need for testing to do a thorough job to find these flaws.
A: OASIS - The right answer is where were you when the requirements were being put together.
A. Doug - Out of having a product fast, cheap, and robust , you can only have two out of the three!

Q: Notion of what we're doing with technology - higher up, how are we going to test all this effectively?
A: OASIS - The advantage of interoperability tests is to show the environment you are depending on.
A: OGC - Technology integration tests involve a use case that all product suppliers work against to prove they interoperate.
A: OGC - An OGC member actually challenged vendors to answer and vendor response was good.
A: NIST - Adopting good methodologies for testing and certification is key - we have to demand it. Also we need to challenge the ways we think of testing for interoperability - in today's systems we don't even know what we are working with, so we need to model these complex systems.

Q: How do you identify the right demand and opportunities for certification?
A: SNIA - Mostly luck, being there at the right time, and with someone who has the funding and the desire to make it happen.
A: OASIS - Need a marketplace that forms a critical mass that demands it.
A: SNIA - Plugfest is a great way.
A: OGC - Vendor wars with critical mass of marketplace; buyers' demand.
A: POSC - Percentages of compliance ("we are 97% compliant") don't mean much of value.

Q: If the goal is interoperability, how do they plan their various standards activities so they all interoperate?
A: OGC & POSC - Spent much time liaising with other relevant organizations to share information. It takes a lot of work but we have to have these interactions. Need the members' and customers' support. Often find the consortium is the proxy for their members.
A: OASIS - Suggests a biological model - the best way is through a user community that gives a good set of requirements which converge.

Q: Tend to think of this in an institutional way; we need very robust systems for precise requirements, but for business success we can benefit from a more flexible approach.
A: NIST - Situationally you have to decide what kind of system you want, think of a hierarchy - high and low - and at low levels, think of the standards.

Q: Heard from Dawn Myerriecks that system needs to be composed on-the-fly - what role do standards and certification have to enable this?
A: SNIA - Could use a government standard on how our capabilities are described for things that may be discovered.
A: OASIS - Need requirements in earlier if we are to get the robust solutions.

Session 3:
Standards and Product Certification: The Supplier View - Meeting Customers' Needs and Maximizing Product Interoperability

Certification, Conformance, and Standardization: Do they Still Matter?
Dr. Douglas W. Johnson, Manager, Standards Strategy, Corporate Standards Department, Chief Technology Office, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Dr. Johnson listed the topics he will touch upon. The Single UNIX Specification (UNIX03) represents a success story of standardization of the UNIX platform. The downside is that POSIX lost headway from the viewpoint of the customer. Sun wishes that Linux would become a variant of POSIX rather than a divergent platform.

Standardization challenges include:

• Interoperability assumes more importance as all devices get connected.
• Creative tension between innovation, competition, and standardization is complex.
• Internet and telecom convergence is potentially disruptive.
• If you don't standardize, delayed market creation and development is a typical outcome.

Why bother with standardization at all? For suppliers it is business RoI, and this can be through creating and growing markets, as well as more revenues. For customers it provides vendor leverage and business advantage. For standardization bodies it is continued existence as their core business.

The state of standardization today is that it has been quite successful, but may becoming a victim of its own success. There are numerous standards, some with certification but most not. Consortia and trade organizations have proliferated. Successes include POSIX and the merged UNIX specification, the Internet and its transaction protocols, Network Transports, the WWW, Multimedia Formats, Java. Missed opportunities include OSI and Ada, Security, UNIX system administration and ABIs, Linux as an open source POSIX-compliant system, and intellectual property entanglements threatening continued progress. Future opportunities could be Instant Messaging infrastructures.

One of the risks of standardization is that you could do it too soon and miss the real heart of the right technical reason - get the timing right. Another is that unless it serves a real business purpose then it will not be taken up. New approaches are needed to address the new requirements for standardization. We need a multitude of standardization venues, and in this context we should consider alternative approaches like the Java Community Process structure for specification-reference implementation-compatibility test suites. We should also combine the strengths of open source with the customer benefits of standardization - open standards.

New approaches we should take up include evaluating all the existing and emerging elements of the standardization process, and the intellectual property issues - royalty-free is preferred but RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) with up-front licensing terms is acceptable.

Doug's conclusions are that we should evaluate and balance the new drivers for standards, and evolve processes which recognize the motivations of participants.

3-D Graphics Standards and Product Development
Keith Cok, Senior Engineering Manager, Silicon Graphics Inc.

Keith said that SGI has a different perspective on standards and certifications to most organizations. Some standards are accepted as a matter of course, but there are other standards that are perhaps customer-driven, or have a specific business case, or require a larger effort that needs careful decision on RoI. SGI's OpenGL is an API specification for low-level polygon data display. It is adopted in many commercial/professional products, and is successful for several reasons, which he listed in his slides.

SGI's motivation for the OpenGL standard was to grow the market for graphics adoption, and they helped its adoption by forming an Architecture Review Board (ARB) which had cross-industry vendor membership and so assured common agreement and continued adoption. The differentiator was then to make sure that OpenGL ran better on SGI's platform than on any other competitor. This led to better technology - SSI configurations (multiple CPUs), then Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). This then led to a dedicated graphics card which enabled 3-D displays, and continuing development shifted the focus to good software and software developer kits. However, the whole industry has benefited from a base standard which has facilitated huge growth in the marketplace. The OpenGL standard is a massive success.

Java Compatibility - The Why and the How
Onno Kluyt, Director, JCP Program Office, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Onno explained he runs the Java Community Process. Java is a binary software standard, and this is the value proposition of the technology. Onno asserted that claims of compatibility must be meaningful and also equitable. The three elements that define a Java technology are the specification, the reference implementation, and the technology compatibility kit. For someone to claim Java compatibility requires an implementation that .... the technology compatibility kit.

Conformance is important to maintain a level of value in the Java brand, the assurance in application portability, assurance of a level playing field for all implementers, assurance to end users that required functionality is present. Also developers can write to the specification rather than the implementation. Onno discussed conformance requirements, and noted that conformance testing in done as self-certification on the basis that an implementer must not change the tests. They have a two-stage appeals process to resolve disagreements, in which the specification is checked by a lead expert, and if this does not resolve the dispute then the JCP executive committee will make a binding decision.

Session 4:
Standards and Product Certification: The Customer View - How Standards work for us, Establishing a Standards Strategy, the Advantages of Certified Systems.

The Importance of Standards and Conformance to the Aerospace Industry
Dr. Vaho Rebassoo, Chief Technical Officer, IT Services, The Boeing Company

Dr. Rebassoo said he felt that The Open Group already knows well the answers to this question. Boeing is a large (50 billion dollar) company, supplying the commercial as well as defense community, operating worldwide, and working with thousands of supplier partners and customers. Vaho noted that an aeroplane has been defined as a million components flying in close formation - it takes a lot of good "glue" to ensure they stick together so well and with so very few failures. The Boeing Company is extremely diverse, with interests in several business areas. It has global scope, with worldwide sales, and employees and business partners in many countries and US states. It is more than a single enterprise, and it integrates its operations with close interactions with its partners and its customers. So with a large complex global enterprise, it has a similarly extensive IT infrastructure - Vaho showed a slide illustrating this magnitude. Their IT is also complex, as is illustrated by its number of different platforms, business unit applications, and corporate applications, all of which are part of his area of responsibility. With these levels of magnitude and complexity, Boeing finds standards essential as a strategy to achieve integration of its IT operations. Boeing's vision for 2016 is people working together - global IT deployment. Boeing believes that infrastructure standards and the assurance that products conform to them, provide:

• Reliability - known behavior and interaction among elements
• Responsiveness - agility in adapting to change in requirements and technology
• Cost-effectiveness - mitigates proprietary integration and lessens proprietary upgrades
• Ease-of-use - improved productivity from less change and familiarity with user interfaces

Add to this that standards and conformance to them enables intelligent flow of information giving common format, semantics, and behavior. These have much commonality with the agility that the DoD talk about as essential to their success.

SEWP: Government-Wide Contracts and IT Procurement
Joanne Woytek, NASA SEWP Program Manager, NASA

Joanne explained that the SEWP name is now outdated (no longer the Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement center because they don't procure workstations any more), but they still just keep the SEWP name because it has brand recognition from its past work. She described the scope and reach of their operations. She explained that SEWP has four objectives, and the one which keeps their interest in The Open Group activities is to minimize system incompatibilities and facilitate hardware and software standardization across agency and the Government through easy-to-use commercial contracts.

Their history covers SEWP-I, SEWP-II, and SEWP-III. The future is SEWP IV, which will be launched in 2005. It must be relevant now and fresh in five years' time. It will still deal with operating systems, but other technologies are important  particularly peripherals, security, and information. SEWP sees three types of standards - technical (TOG, ANSI, ISO), de facto (Windows, Office, etc.), and Upper Management (CIO). A lot of CIOs like the single-solution approach, but SEWP sees homogeneity as their preferred route. Joanne listed some key questions that she needs answers to and suspects we all need to answer - these address:

• OS standards - the way ahead for UNIX, Linux, Windows.
• What do people really want/need? - Choose standards or the latest technology (can't have both).
• What does high-end IT mean today? - Computing power, network capability, or applications.

She will welcome leadership to indicate the answers to these questions. Joanne closed by noting that of all the many interactions and questions she has in her daily life, no customer has ever asked "is it certified?" - this is a telling point.

Building out the IT Infrastructure: The Role of Standards
Dave Chesebrough, President, Association for Enterprise Integration (AFEI)

Dave noted the different kinds of standards - regulatory, consensus. Standards have been with us for a long time, and we can expect them to continue to be so. Is IT a commodity? Dave presented a model for infrastructure buildout - it has three stages:

• Stage 1 - early adopters gain competitive advantage
• Stage 2 - competition grows and advantages erode
• Stage 3 - competitive advantage becomes hard to find

The customer view was eloquently expressed by Carl O'Berry earlier today - I want to buy solutions, not components and gadgets that I have to put together myself. The strategy is therefore to broaden standards efforts, recognize the commodity aspect of IT, understand its uniqueness, and focus on process not technology. The next generation of competitive advantage is how we use network-centric operations. This would need a robust family of standards, certification of products for confidence, and adaptability to technology. Dave's conclusions were:

• Commoditization of IT requires infrastructure standards.
• These standards must be ubiquitous.
• Certification is important, but software is an art so there will always be an element of the unknown.

And the question we should ask ourselves is: "Are you ready for nano-technology?"

Closing Keynote The Role of Standards in the Adaptive Enterprise
Ron Eller, Vice President and General Manager, ESS Solution Alliances, Hewlett-Packard Company

Ron explained that HP's Adaptive Enterprise vision is business and IT synchronized to capitalize on change - the time it takes to make a change, and how much change can be accommodated in one go. Their vision is that any system environment a customer wants should be possible to roll out with relative ease and adaptable to fit the business needs of the customer with similar facility. HP's Adaptive Enterprise design principles depend on getting the infrastructure right and then enabling it to be put together with ease. The key design principles are simplification (reduced number of components, and minimum/zero customization), standardization (use standards, common architecture, standard processes), modularity (reusable components, logical architectures), and integration (business and IT well-linked, applications and processes also well integrated, and automated change management).

The HP and Compaq merge has resulted in multimillion-dollar savings in the combined organization's supply chain and IT support costs. These addressed standardized processes, standardized metrics, industry best practices, standardized change methodologies, and application standardization. Standards in the Adaptive Enterprise are seen as an important strategic approach to business and IT - standards reduce cost and simplify change. There are some 150 standards bodies that HP keeps a handle on - this it too many to manage comfortably, and HP considers that these standards bodies should accept some responsibility for cooperating to ensure their standards interoperate. Re-usable components are also an important part of the HP vision, as is consistent implementation. Standardization on partnering provides compatibility through certifications, application portability, and best practices driving efficiency.

Summarizing, Ron asserted that HP's Adaptive Enterprise vision is the ultimate state of fitness where business and IT are perfectly synchronized to capitalize on change.

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