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SAN FRANCISCO & MCKINLEYVILLE, Calif., July 24, 2006 – During
The Open Group’s IT Architecture Practitioners Conference held last week
at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables in Miami, members of The Calendaring and
Scheduling Consortium (CalConnect) demonstrated a proof-of-concept application
to aggregate and display free/busy information collected from multiple organizations
using multiple calendaring applications.
This demonstration was in response to The Open Group Free/Busy Challenge issued
in January 2006 on behalf of The Boeing Company. The challenge had a very aggressive
schedule and was based upon specific needs identified by Boeing. The Open Group
and Boeing, which is a member of both consortia, invited CalConnect to partner
with them in addressing the challenge.
The proof-of-concept demonstration represents a coordinated effort between
The Open Group’s Messaging Forum and CalConnect to find ways to identify
free/busy status for people from different organizations using different calendaring
systems as an aid to scheduling joint activities, such as meetings and teleconferences.
The specific objectives of the proof-of-concept project were:
- a real-time mechanism;
- ability to extract and collate/display free/busy information;
- at least three major calendaring systems;
- open standard protocols; and
- can be implemented today.
“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,” said Allen Brown, president and CEO, The Open Group. “The
members of CalConnect and The Open Group came together to meet that challenge.”
CalConnect is working on comprehensive standards-based solutions for calendar
and scheduling functionality and interoperability, of which exchange of free/busy
information is an important part.
The objectives of the proof-of-concept project were fully achieved within
the specified time frame. The demonstration in Miami 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 and 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.
“CalConnect was very pleased to demonstrate a practical application
of the emerging CalDAV standard to address a real world problem, and thanks
its members, in particular Rensselaer Polytechnic, The Boeing Company, IBM
and TimeBridge, for their efforts,” said Dave Thewlis, the Executive
Director of CalConnect. “The only way that this accomplishment could
have been met within the timeframe was by building upon open standards-based
implementations.”
Based upon CalDAV and other standards, such as iCalendar, the free/busy technology
demonstrated can readily be enhanced as the standards are evolved to address
such issues as calendar user discovery, automated scheduling and authentication.
The Open Group and CalConnect members will continue to work together to produce
a comprehensive report of the achievements to date, encourage the deployment
of the solutions demonstrated, and plan how to enrich the functionality and
applicability of the solutions.
A presentation describing the process and the demonstration may be found at:
http://www.calconnect.org/presentations/freebusydemo.pdf or
http://www.opengroup.org/messaging/public/jul-2006/freebusydemo.pdf
(http://www.calconnect.org)
The Consortium focuses on the interoperable exchange of calendaring and scheduling
information between dissimilar programs, platforms, and technologies. The
mission is to provide mechanisms to allow calendaring and scheduling methodologies
to interoperate to promote understanding of these methodologies, and to enable
calendaring and scheduling tools and applications to enter the mainstream
of computing. Organizational members include Boeing, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth,
Duke University, EVDB, Fresno State, Harvard ASCS, IBM, Jet Propulsion Lab,
MIT, Mozilla Foundation, New York University, Novell, Open Source Applications
Foundation, Oracle Corporation, PeopleCube, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
Stanford University, Symbian, TimeBridge, Trumba, UC Berkeley, University
of Chicago, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Yahoo! Inc.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1824, is the oldest technological
university in the U.S. See http://www.rpi.edu for more information about Rensselaer.
Bedework is an open source, standards-based, calendaring system. For more
information about Bedework, see http://www.bedework.org
TimeBridge is a venture-backed start up that is building an innovative meeting
scheduling and collaboration service for busy professionals. Based in San Francisco,
the company is currently in stealth mode and expects to launch its services
later this year. TimeBridge is currently recruiting select users for its private
beta program at http://www.timebridge.com.
PR Contact: John Stormer, 510-589-8353, pr@timebridge.com.
The Open Group’s IT Architecture Practitioners Conference,
now in its third year, is a globally recognized event created
by and for IT Architecture professionals to engage in interactive
discussions about a wide variety of topics impacting the
profession, such as SOA, architecture disciplines, architecture
team development, and setting up an architecture practice.
The conference examines the evolving disciplines of IT Architecture
with a focus on further defining a common set of core competencies
for individuals involved with professional enterprise architecture.
Additional information is available at: http://www.opengroup.org/events/
The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral
consortium, which drives the creation of Boundaryless Information
Flow™ that 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. Further information on The Open Group can be found
at http://www.opengroup.org.
Note to Editors: TOGAF
and Boundaryless Information Flow are trademarks of The Open
Group.
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