Topicality

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Topicality:

"Mobile Commerce 2000" was the theme of The Open Group Conference this April. The Conference coincided with the launch of the Mobile Management Forum on Wednesday April 12.

Two full days of Plenary Presentations interspersed with Panel Discussions covered a range of subjects:

Vision - The potential of Mobile Commerce in all aspects of home, work and play
Growth - The rapid take up of mobile phones especially in Europe
Development - The move towards third generation mobile phones with access to the Internet
Hype - Expectations for mobile devices exceed what is currently possible
Wireless Security - Existing and planned security solutions
Wireless LAN Technologies - Coexistence and standardization
Content Provision - Device independent content provision
Corporate Use - Extending corporate data to wireless and mobile devices
Data Synchronization - Enabling user mobility
Mobile IP - The role of the Internet Protocol
E-Speak - The use of e-Speak technology
Directory - The role of Directory in Corporate Mobile
Interoperability - The importance of testing and certification
and much more

Summaries, slides and other materials are available in our Post Meeting Documentation (available to Members)

Sponsorship:

We thank the Mobile Data Association for its support of the Conference.
We were pleased to have Critical Path, Hewlett Packard, Motorola and Sun Microsystems as joint sponsors of our Conference.

Our Speakers:

The contribution from plenary speakers (in order of appearance) was highly valued.

Kenny Hirschhorn	Group Director of Strategy, Imagineering and Futurology	Orange PLC
Jenny Searle	Director, Information Society Initiative (ISI)	UK Department of Trade and Industry
Mike Herman	Vice President Mobile Commerce and Chairman, Global Mobile Commerce Forum (GMCF)	Thyron Ltd)
Steve Toft	Business Development Manager	Motorola
Philippe Vrignaud	Marketing Manager	Schlumberger Mobile Communications
Heikki Heinaro	Director, Mobile E-Business, Nokia Internet Communications	Nokia
Stefan Engel-Flechsig	Managing Director and General Counsel of Sonera SmartTrust Germany	Sonera SmartTrust Germany
Stephen Farrell,	Chief Security Architect	Baltimore Technologies, & PKI Forum
Richard H. Paine	Advanced Computing Technologist, Applied Research & Technology, Shared Services Group	The Boeing Company
Ulf Tornqvist	Manager, Business Development, Wireless LAN Systems	Ericsson
Kirk Allchorne	Nokia, and WECA board member	Nokia
Paul Kitchen	Marketing Manager	Reuters Wireless
Richard Jelbert	Chief Technical Officer	Argo Interactive Ltd.
Rodney Edwards	Partner	Edwards Churcher Design
Jason Hertling	Director	RazorFish CyberLab Finland
Mike Short	Chairman Mobile Data Association and Director, International Affairs & Strategy, BT	BT Cellnet
Dr Jeff F Rulifson	Director, Networking and Security Center, and Chair, The Open Group Governing Board	SUN Microsystems Laboratories
Jon R Newlyn	Business Development Manager	Attachmate (UK)
Douglas Heintzman	Manager Standard Initiatives	IBM Pervasive Computing
Bill Jones	Vice President, Marketing	Synchrologic, Inc
Helen Blackburn	Synchronisation Strategy Manager	Psion Group
Peter George	Director	Wheatstone Consulting Ltd.
Martin Kendrick	Managing Director	Brand Communications Ltd.
Christopher M Crane	General Manager, Mobile Access Business Unit	WRQ Inc.
Arthur Feather	Cellular Architecture Czar	Cisco Systems Ltd.
Bjarke Nielsen	Senior Manager in Marketing and Standards	Qualcomm CDMA
Stef Coetzee	Director	Wheatstone Consulting Ltd
Per Englund	Vice President Integrated Business Services	Telia
Richard S Weir	Vice President, Business Alliances	Critical Path

External contributors to other sessions through the week are too numerous to mention here (please see the individual reports). We extend thanks to all our speakers who gave such a breadth of information and insights in our Plenary and other Sessions.

Location:

We welcomed a large number of members and visitors to our Conference. Indeed with over 300 participants this was our best attended European meeting ever! All sessions were well attended and the interaction between suppliers and buyers was as high as ever! This was acknowledged through various press reports

Announcements:

We were pleased to announce that Motorola has joined The Open Group as a Platinum Sponsor and founder member of The Mobile Management Forum.
We were also able to announce Intel's intention to make CDSA Open Source.

Demonstrations:

Exposition space featured demonstrations from Critical Path, Synchrologic and WRQ. We also showed the re-launched Standards Information Base

Forums:

The Customer and Supplier Forums met for the third time. Each forum broke into discussion groups to identify areas of future activity.

Projects and
Program
Groups:

Mobile Management Forum:
The inaugural meeting of The Open Group Mobile Management Forum was attended by 49 individuals from 39 different companies or organizations. A draft document, Market Drivers for the Foundation of The Open Group Mobile Management Forum (soon to be published more widely), recording the results of six months research by The Open Group was made available to participants.

During the meeting, sub-groups were formed to validate the analysis recorded in the document and to propose further action by The Open Group Mobile Management Forum.

Architecture Program Group:
The Architecture Program meeting at London made significant progress in carrying forward the new work program launched in October 1999, focused on standards for open IT architecture tools, and on COTS software as architecture building blocks.

Following the successful pattern established in previous meetings, the meeting at London comprised an open Architecture Briefing on Thursday, 13th April, and a members-only Program Group Workshop on Friday, 14th April.

Directory Program Group:
LDAP Brand: The Open Group announced its intention to launch the LDAP 2000 Server Brand at its June 26-30 conference in Austin, Texas, and the Program Group agreed in principle the definition of the associated "Works With LDAP" application certificate.

Directory-Enabled Enterprise: The Program Group reviewed draft Business Scenarios and customer input for various aspects of the Directory-Enabled Enterprise, and found that there was sufficient commonality to develop a single scenario - which will include mobile computing and communications.

Enterprise Management Program Group:
The Management Program group worked on Service Management building relationships with ITIL and ITSMF, worked on its Manageability Architecture, and reviewed proposals for the next version of the AIC Standard which will have extensions for WBEM/COM and Java Interfaces.

The program group received an update on DMTF activities, from Ray Williams (DMTF Technical Director), Winston Bumpus (DMTF President), and Mike Reynolds (BMC). This included DMTF's completion of their CIM Schema between CIM and LDAP core mapping (for DEN), and completion of their CIM Schema v2.3.

Security and eCommerce Program Group:
During the London meeting, the group spent a significant time reviewing requirements from a variety of sources. These were then compared with existing standards. This valuable work became the input to the development of a new view of how security needs to be managed.

The group will work on the requirements and the management issues for CDSA (open source) between the meetings. The planning for the next meeting will require input from workflow partners and the mobile program group.

IBIX
The first meeting of the Inter Bank Information Exchange (IBIX) took place during the conference.

Summaries, slides and other materials are available in our Post Meeting Documentation (available to Members)

Next
Conference:

We invite you to join us at our next Conference in Austin, Texas from June 26. The plenary theme will be "The Directory-Enabled Enterprise" and the Realtime and Embedded Systems Forum will meet for the first time..

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