Common Access (BoF Session)

This ad-hoc session will update Members on this important initiative show the potential of Common Access to product documentation for multiple implementations. The Open Group Common Documentation activities have moved well beyond the concept phase, with development of the Single UNIX Documentaion which vendors will all ship, to embrace Common Access to Common Documentation via the Internet.

What's the Problem?

Customers need information about products. They need comprehensive, detailed information. When they have problems, they need the right information, fast. Customers will also benefit by having documentation from different suppliers in a common format, making it easier for them to find the relevant information and see the differences between implementations. Vendors make money from products, not from information. But if they don't provide information, their customers become dissatisfied. Support costs rise, sales fall.

Development and maintenance of documentation is very expensive. This cost can be shared amongst vendors willing to build their documentation on a common base as well as using common delivery mechanisms. Common Documentation requires close co-operation between vendors and a common base of information with common formats, conventions and tools. The result is better access to information and reduced costs.

The Single UNIX Documentation project shows how vendors' can cut the costs of developing common information. But this is just a start. Further cost savings can be gained through joint provision and management of information, and by joint development of formats, conventions and tools.

What is Common Access?

Common Access aims to give vendors the standards and tools that they need to deliver information in an integrated, multi-vendor information base, and to give customers transparent access to it. The Open Group Documentation Managers have developed a prototype showing how this can work. They are also working on the business case for Common Access.

The work of the Documentation Managers principally concerned with the Single UNIX Documentation has wide appeal. We are therefore inviting participation from the members of the Open Group Councils, be they System Vendors, Software Vendors or Customers.

BoF Agenda

Here is your chance to see the prototype, examine the business case, look at how Common Documentation and Common Access can help you, and contribute to developments.