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Press Releases
San Francisco, CA – April 8,
2004 – At The Open Group’s recent conference,
key executives from the federal government, industry and technology
consortia discussed their vision of the IT of the future,
and emphasized the importance of standards and certified conformance
for achieving global interoperability.
Dawn Meyerriecks, Principal Director for GIG Enterprise Services,
Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), US Department of
Defense, presented a vision of information flow without boundaries
providing access to information to all who need it when they
need it. She quoted Secretary Rumsfeld stating that “the
most transforming thing in our forces will not be a weapons
system but a set of interconnections and a substantially enhanced
capacity because of that awareness.” She emphasized
that to make this vision a reality, all the elements have
to be standardized and interoperable.
“In today’s defense, old rules don’t apply
anymore – we have to be able to provide an incredible
agility to respond wherever and whenever needed,” said
Meyerriecks. “To be able to go after this vision of
agility and build a global information grid, we need conformance
to standards. Standards are mission critical.”
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Carl O’Berry, Vice President, Strategic Architecture,
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, agreed. “Tomorrow’s
battlespace is integrated, where no soldier is alone but can
access all information that is relevant to him. To achieve
such global interoperability, we need to start with a common,
open architecture based on standards.”
The need for standardization and its significant benefits
from the customer viewpoint was stressed by Dr. Vaho Rebassoo,
CTO, IT Services, The Boeing Company, who presented the challenges
and complexity of integration testing in a large corporation
with over 7,000 servers and 3,000 applications. “Standards
and conformance to standards provide one of the foundational
supports to Boeing’s leadership in the aerospace industry,”
Rebassoo said.
Onno Kluyt, Director, JCP Program Office, Sun Microsystems,
discussed the supplier view. He pointed out that one of the
most important value propositions of the Java technology is
compatibility, which assures application portability and gives
assurance to end users that required functionality is present.
“The Open Group brings together the government agencies,
integrators and vendors in a non-acquisition environment that
allows them to align their needs for interoperability, and
agree on appropriate standards and certification,” said
Allen Brown, President and CEO of The Open Group. “Our
members recognize the importance of providing secure, reliable
and timely access to integrated information, and are working
hard on addressing the challenge and realizing the vision
of Boundaryless Information Flow™.”
The industry’s and government’s call for standards
was enthusiastically received by the expert panel as they
discussed the role and importance of standards and certification,
and looked for ways to collaborate further to increase interoperability
and develop standards earlier in the process. They also agreed
on the need for users to be a part of the process from beginning
to end. The panel included Dr. Susan Zevin, Acting Director
of Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST), Dr. Carl Reed, Executive
Director, Specification Program, Open GIS Consortium, David
Archer, President and CEO, Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium
(POSC), Jamie Clark, Manager for Technical Standards Development,
OASIS, and Roger Reich, Senior Technical Director, VERITAS
Software Corporation, Chair of the SNIA Storage Management
Initiative and Member of the Board of the DMTF.
The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral
consortium, whose vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™
will enable access to integrated information within and between
enterprises based on open standards and global interoperability.
The Open Group works with customers, suppliers, consortia
and other standard bodies. Its role is to capture, understand
and address current and emerging requirements, establish policies
and share best practices; to facilitate interoperability,
develop consensus, and evolve and integrate specifications
and open source technologies; to offer a comprehensive set
of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia;
and to operate the industry’s premier certification
service.
Boundaryless Information Flow is a
trademark of The Open Group.
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