Slide 1
Ohayo gozaimasu… Sumimasen, nihongo ga amari hanashimasen … Gomennasai! Watashi wa eigo ga hanashimas.
I am pleased and honored to come to you today to discuss what The Open Group is all about, the highlights of The Open Group in 2003 and the plans for 2004. I hope that I will be able to adequately represent the very important work that is being done at The Open Group. In twenty minutes that will be very difficult and I encourage everyone interested to look at The Open Group further to get more detail. Fujieda-San and I will be most happy to help you get further detail if you wish.
I have worked in the IT world for over 23 years. The first 20 years with the NCR Corporation where I spent a great deal of time in software development and architecture. My last position was Director of Strategic Architecture for NCR, overlooking all of NCR’s architecture work. In this position I became directly involved with The Open Group through The Open Group’s Architecture Forum. I am happy to say that this engagement was so enlightening that I opted to come work as The Open Group’s CIO about 3 years ago. In addition to my role as CIO I am now responsible for the Enterprise business that provides services to organizations such as those represented in this esteemed audience. Many of the services revolve around what is commonly thought of as the membership business. As the Vice President of this business I am please to address you and provide you some insights on what we are about, what progress is being made, and what we plan to do in the future.
Slide 2
One way to look at The Open Group is through this picture. The Open Group is a consortium with its foundation in its membership: a diverse group that spans all sectors of the IT community. Although we talk mostly about customers and suppliers (meaning systems and solutions vendors), we must also recognize that tools vendors, integrators and consultants comprise a significant and growing interest in our membership, and the recently launched academic membership has also had a good degree of take-up. At the base of this picture you see our membership is comprised of organizations that represent buyers of information technology, such as Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Toyota, … And those in the value chain to produce information technology or information technology consulting, such as Fujitsu, Hitachi, Fuji Research Corporation, Toshiba, NTT Software Corporation, Rococo, Ricoh, Sony, NEC, Hokkaido University, Kyoto University,…
Built from this foundation are the services that we have developed and continue to operate for our membership, but increasingly offer to third parties. These services (strategy, management, innovation, standards, certification and testing) are described as follows:
The Open Group provides a range of “strategy” services to set-out members’ business objectives and to plan the execution against those objectives:
Business Objectives include Business Scenarios and User Requirements
Other services include Architecture Frameworks, Specification Requirements, and Procurement services
We also provide Management Services that offer a range of activities from initial set-up (legal, financial, organizational assistance), to support for ongoing management and operation and the provision of the infrastructure services necessary for successful operation (such as web-based collaboration, mailing lists, et cetera).
Innovation and research services include the hosting of open source and other collaborative projects. In addition, The Open Group research and innovation team can provide technical research and consulting, with a particular focus on technology transference from research to practical implementation.
Standards Services have developed over 18 years as a result of experienced facilitation and consensus building to deliver standards in both large and small scope. In addition, we publish a number of guides and other publications to ensure and increase market uptake. Included in this category are:
Standardization services that cover standards definition and procedures, consensus procedures, support services, and best practices.
Our process provides management and facilitation employing our document review system that is specifically designed for collaborative document development, and consensus review and voting. In this way, our process speeds up delivery and maximizes the input from the technical experts engaged in the standards work.
Testing Services provide the basic service for testing products for conformance to a standard and cover the full life-cycle of test suite implementation and usage, from the test planning stage through to the continuing alignment of the test suite with an evolving specification. The Open Group implements its testing services in-line with existing international standards and has a proven record of successful implementations against these standards. Included are:
Test Plan Development
Automated Test Environment
Test Suite Development
Test Suite Maintenance
Interoperability Events
Finally The Open Group is the premier certification service provider of the IT industry, The Open Group’s certification services include:
Policy definition
Program development
Certification operations
At the top we have the external environment that comprise:
Project partners – organizations that we partner with in joint proposals for the delivery of services or for government-funded projects (EU, DARPA, et cetera)
Consortia and associations who are either strategic partners or customers for our services
Vendors who are not members, but who buy our products: test software, certification, binaries, et cetera
Governments, who tend not only to be members, but also leaders in mandating certification of conformance, customers for our services and who finance many of the new approaches through government-funded projects.
What kind of organizations engage in our membership offerings?
Slide 3
First there are our sponsors who enjoy entitlements such as a Board Seat and access to any, and all, Forums that include some of the largest information technology providers in the world. These sponsors provide over $300 billion dollars worth of Information Technology to the world annually. This includes a significant volume of products branded by The Open Group.
Slide 4
Next are our non-sponsor members who enjoy entitlements such as access to forum work, they include organizations from around the world that represent a large portion of information technology providers and information technology consumers. These members represent over $50 billion dollars worth of Information Technology spend to the world annually. The companies represented here are just a sample of the members companies of The Open Group.
Why are these companies interested in The Open Group, what motivates them to join our organization?
Slide 5
Well I have an opportunity to see and speak with many CIOs… CIOs seem to have at least one thing in common… that is dealing with two related trends.
One trend is the ever increasing demand on our information technology, whether the business is going well or the business is slowing down the demand for information technology increases.
The other trend is slowing budgets. Now budgets may not be decreasing everywhere, but let’s agree that the increase in demand is greater than the increase in IT budget.
This ever increasing gap between demand and budget is causing CIOs to do “more for less” and it is this situation that is causing CIOs to look for every opportunity for leverage. Open source, outsourcing, off shore development, and collaborative developments are some examples of leverage opportunities. Understanding and re-using building blocks is a significant leverage opportunity and that is one of the keys to our membership business.
What are some of the other relevant pressures on CIOs and IT managers?
Slide 6
Some of the other pressures of CIOs and IT managers are directly related to the vision of The Open Group, that vision is Boundaryless Information Flow. Boundaryless Information Flow achieved through Global Interoperability of products, but done so in a secure, reliable, and timely manner is the vision of The Open Group staff and The Open Group membership.
As a caveat, we need to ensure that we understand that Boundaryless should not be taken literally to mean no boundaries, rather it means that boundaries that are required are permeable as appropriate to enable the business.
Boundaryless Information Flow is driven by a need to make improvements to business processes, especially business processes that are themselves breaking down organizational boundaries.
So what might a Boundaryless environment look like?
Slide 7
Graphically we use this picture to represent a boundaryless information technology environment. In this environment business processes are seamlessly supported by IT systems. But looking at the details, even in an oversimplified way, one can see that the “systems” supporting these processes are not single systems – there are many. In order to get the operational efficiencies a level of integration must occur at 2 points. Integrated information must happen to provide a single view of information within a given vertical area such as procurement, or requirements, or enterprise resource planning information, … Additionally to support end to end process improvements an integrated view must be provided horizontally.
Note these systems need not be technology systems, they can be organizational systems. The need to integrate the information and provide access despite of the level of computer technology that exists in the environment.
This is a desired state…
Slide 8
However what we typically have today is depicted here where the information technology environment is dominated by stovepipes that do not readily release information in support of business processes that they were not originally designed to support. In some cases point to point connections are made on the order of hundreds and thousands of application connections. This is extremely costly, some estimate that the cost of this type of integration along with business process integration is approximately 33% of IT spend… that is over 1 trillion dollars a year world wide.
This is a very real and very large problem!
Slide 9
The Open Group is focused, positioned, and prepared to work toward BOUNDARYLESS INFORMATION FLOW. We have defined our anticipated role in our mission.
Our pledge is to drive the creation of boundaryless information flow achieved by:
Working with customers to capture, understand and address current and emerging requirements, establish policies and share best practices;
Working with vendors, consortia and standards bodies to develop consensus and facilitate interoperability, to evolve and integrate open specifications and open source technologies;
Offering a comprehensive set of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia; and
Developing and operating the industry’s premier certification service and encouraging procurement of certified products.
The Open Group provides unique value to the development of Boundaryless Information Flow. Let’s now take a look at what is required to make Boundaryless Information Flow a reality.
Slide 10
We know that critical to solving the Boundaryless Information Flow problem is the use of products that are certified to support standards. If standards are not supported in products then more point solutions will appear and the problem will just continue to grow.
What we at The Open Group will do is make standards work for customers so they buy more certified products that support Boundaryless Information Flow in the Mission Critical space. Our focal point is about removing obstacles to sharing of information across domains, and in this respect we provide the “glue” to integrate existing standards and identify gaps where standards are needed to address the problem space. Our current view of areas that require attention include:
Workflow management to automatically move information in the environment.
Application to application messaging to enable applications to gain access to information managed by other applications, or to allow them to simply communicate.
Mobility management to provide infrastructure support for enabling information to be delivered to consumers on the move.
Security to ensure that the information that is flowing is only created, read, and updated by those authorized to do so.
Directory to enable consumers to know what information is available and how to get it.
System management to ensure the availability of all the essential components of the system necessary to deliver information in a timely manner.
Information management to ensure that information is optimally created, retrieved, updated, deleted, and archived.
User interface and ontology support to ensure that users get what they need, in the form they need it, to make decisions and take actions at the point of service/action.
Transaction management to ensure that integrity of the information state is maintained.
We currently have working programs in most areas, but we have identified gaps where standards need to be developed.
Slide 11
We have working groups, called Forum, that are addressing many of the areas that require attention.
The Messaging Forum is working application to application messaging
The Directory Interoperability and Mobile Forum is working mobility management and directory
The Security Forum is working on security
The Enterprise Systems Management and QoS Forum is dealing with system management
The Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum is dealing with many of the issues
The Base Platform Forum is working on providing a solid base platform that is leveraged by all other areas
The Architecture Forum is working on the method that we are using to develop architectures in all the work areas
We are currently looking at new possible forums to address the gaps in:
Workflow management
Information management
User interface and ontology support
Transaction management
So what are we doing in a little more detail…
Slide 12
The Forum are each working on specific activities. This chart shows many of the activities currently being worked within those forum. As you see it is a pretty large list that I will not read… but let me highlight some of the newer activities:
Anti-Spam best practice is being investigated to help us eliminate as much information overflow as possible.
Application Quality/Resource Management (AQuaReuM) is looking at ensuring that applications are reliable and available.
Identity Management is investigating what it takes to ensure that the identity of information consumers is known and validated.
Instant Messaging is being investigated, as this is a new communication mechanism that is all about information flow, primarily between humans.
Linux Standards Base Certification is being developed to ensure that the new open source model adds value as a reliable base platform upon which solutions can be built.
Open Architecture for Real-time is being developed to create the guidelines for the creation of real-time infrastructure to ensure that information can flow.
Open Source in the Enterprise is being investigated to ensure that this development model can add value in the creation of quality components.
Policy Management is being investigated as polices are driving information technology usage more and more and there is a need to tighten up the connection between policies and the actual information technology.
Unified Messaging is being investigated to tear down the barriers to the different communication devices and mechanisms.
But what are some of the more recent accomplishments that the forum have realized?
Slide 13
The Architecture Forum has produced new versions of TOGAF throughout the years. There are now 31 new TOGAF 8 Corporate Licenses, there are nearly 2,400 new TOGAF 8 evaluation downloads, and there are new certifications every month.
The Directory Interoperability and Mobile Forum has introduced a new LDAP Server Certification program, has launched activity on a Secure Directory Server, and has begun its work on an Enterprise Identity Management architecture.
The Enterprise Management and QoS Forum has completed the ARM 4.0 Technical Standards for C and Java, and has released OpenPegasus 2.2.1 which is an open source project that provides a management information broker.
The Real-time & Embedded Systems have made strides in Safety Critical RT Java, Security for Real-time, and an Open Architecture for Real-time.
Slide 14
The Messaging Forum has initiated a project with the Mass Health Data Consortium on secure messaging. It has the engagement of the US DoD and commitment from major Secure Messaging Gateways vendors. The forum has also initiated investigations into Spam and Instant Messaging issues.
The Security Forum has developed a Risk Preparedness Index to assess security risks. It has also initiated an exciting effort called Enterprise Vulnerability Management, and it has produced a Manager’s Guide to Data Privacy.
The Base Platform Forum group continues to make progress in the Unix space. There is now a 2003 Edition of Single UNIX ® Specification Version 3 that is ratified and published as International Standard ISO/IEC 9945:2003. Also the UNIX Internationalization Guide has been published to support breaking down language barriers.
Again much has happened and I really only scratched the surface of the accomplishments. Now let’s move on to plans.
Slide 15
The Architecture Forum will create a certification program for TOGAF 8, it will host more practitioners conferences in 2004, and it will work on TOGAF 8.1 and TOGAF 9 further improving TOGAF’s ability to guide the development of Enterprise Architectures.
The Directory Interoperability and Mobile Forum will produce an Enterprise Identity Management Architecture Guide, create another LDAP Certification program, and define an advanced Secure Service profile.
The Enterprise Management and QoS Forum will move forward with OpenPegasus 2.4, will produce a Common Management Protocol Interface (CMPI) Technical Standard, will add to OpenPegasus Interface Technical Standards, and will move forward with the AQRM project.
Slide 16
The Messaging Forum will continue it’s investigation into Spam, Unified Messaging, and Secure Messaging and developing the deliverables that best match the needs of the members involved.
The Real-time & Embedded Systems Forum will focus on Net-Centric environments, including Mission Critical and Real-time Java, Software Assurance, standards, tools; Standardized XML Tags; MILS standards and much more.
The Security Forum will escalate the Vulnerability Management issues to CFOs, CTOs, and CIOs. Ultimately this project will lead the realization of vulnerability managed systems. The forum will also make progress on documenting security architectures. The Security Forum will also be working on guides and joint work with other forum.
The Base Platform Forum will be working on Linux certifications, and another revision of Unix®.
Slide 17
We also have plans in place to document some of our members excellent findings and best practices in new guides including:
Identity and Authentication
Identification Theft
PKI Trust Models
Manager’s Guide to Secure Messaging
Manager’s Guide to Spam
Manager’s Guide to Open Source
Let me now summarize.
Slide 18
The Open Group’s real value is in addressing the “more for less” issue that I discussed before. Given that CIOs and IT managers are required to deliver more IT capability with less budget, there is a need to look for high leverage projects.
The Open Group’s membership model is based on leverage, one works with others that have similar problems and get more done cheaper, better, and faster.
The Open Group provides access to practical tools to solve problems, such as best practices, templates, and directly reusable assets.
And finally The Open Group provides access to people that have similar problems and at many levels, from the CIO level down to the very important technical levels.
All of this value helps members, help other members make real progress in addressing their IT issues and taking steps toward solving their Boundaryless Information Flow problems.
Slide 19
Domo arigato gozaimasu!
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