Federated Free/Busy
The Federated Free/Busy Challenge was issued in January 2006, based
around a
Business Scenario document developed by the Messaging Forum. The
specific objective embodied within the challenge was:
By the end of Q3 2006 there should be a
real-time mechanism that is able to extract and collate/display
free/busy information from at least three major groupware packages using
open standard protocols for a constrained list of named attendees and
constrained list of times.
A collaboration was established with the Calendaring & Scheduling
Consortium (CalConnect.org).
On Monday July 17, the project team demonstrated a response to the
challenge which fully achieved the objective set:
- The demonstration included display of free/busy data aggregated
across seven different calendaring systems, including:
- Bedework
- Google Calendar
- Lotus Notes
- Microsoft Exchange
- Oracle Calendar
- OSAF’s Chandler
- TimeBridge
- The core technology used was CalDAV, an open standard for
calendar access and management.
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the developer of the Bedework
Calendar, used its open source CalDAV implementation and developed a
Free/Busy Aggregator and browser interface. Boeing and IBM
contributed connectors to interface CalDAV with Exchange and Notes
respectively.
- TimeBridge demonstrated its scheduling service’s ability to
aggregate free/busy information across multiple organizations
directly within a user’s Microsoft Outlook client.
The project and demonstration was described in a presentation.
Quotes about the significance of the demonstration were made by:
- Allen Brown, President & CEO of The Open Group: Our members
identified the need for a simple mechanism to see when a group of
people would be available for a meeting, whether within or outside
of their companies. The members of CalConnect Consortium and The
Open Group came together to meet that challenge.
- Dave Thewlis, Executive Director of the Calendaring and
Scheduling Consortium: CalConnect Consortium was very pleased to
demonstrate a practical application of the emerging CalDAV standard
to address a real world problem, and thanks its member - in
particular Rensselaer Polytechnic, The Boeing Company, IBM, and
TimeBridge - for their efforts; the only way that this accomplishment
could have been met within the timeframe was by building upon open
standards-based implementations.
On Tuesday July 18, the team convened to consider how to build on
the success of the demonstration:
- A plan was agreed to develop a Challenge Report setting out how
the project achieved its objectives.
- Boeing have a deployment plan with their business partners from
the beginning of September.
- The Rensselar Polytechnic Institute web site will offer a
"toolkit" explaining how organizations can deploy the technology
now.
Secure Messaging Gateway Architecture
As a follow-up to a working session in April 2006, a workshop was
held to develop a Business Scenario to provide a context for a revision
of the SMG Certification program (launched in July 2004).
A major feature of the proposed project is to extend the scope to
encompass all broadly deployed protocols for email content protection,
rather than being limited simply to S/MIME.
The specific objectives derived for the project are:
- By July 2007, define the architecture of an email gateway
solution with the following characteristics:
- Meets business and regulatory requirements for content
protection
- Hides complexity of security from end users
- Enables enterprises to minimize cost of email protection
- Supports major modes of inter-operation:
- Desktop
- Desktop proxy at gateway
- Gateway
- Interoperable with the open standard protocols used for
content protection most broadly deployed:
- Transparent support for desktop- to- desktop encryption
(outbound and inbound)
- Includes facilities to support content protection aspects of
an enterprise email policy
- Worldwide applicability (language, cultural conventions,
etc.)
- Supports key discovery and validation without manual
intervention
- Flexibility in underlying standards constrained to ensure
interoperability of solutions (profiles)
- Supported by a certification program that allows customers to
clearly identify the extent to which an individual vendor product
conforms to the defined architecture
This Business Scenario was developed by a group comprising Messaging
System Vendors and Consultants. There was no customer involvement. All
present agreed that it is necessary to get customer feedback before
proceeding further with this project.
Manager's Guide to Message Retention
The session on the Manager's Guide to Message Retention was postponed
because of the absence of one key participant and logistics problems
associated with notification of a teleconference.
