The Open Group

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Open Group is an industry consortium to set vendor- and technology-neutral open standards for computing infrastructure. It was formed when X/Open merged with the Open Software Foundation in 1996. The Open Group is most famous as the certifying body for the UNIX trademark, in the past the group was bestknown for its publication of the Single UNIX Specification paper, which extends the POSIX standards and is the official definition of UNIX. Their members include a range of IT buyers and vendors as well as government agencies, for example Capgemini, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NEC, US Department of Defense, NASA and others.

1 Programs
- 1.1 Certification
- 1.2 Member Forums
2 History
3 Inventions and standards
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Programs

[edit] Certification

The Open Group's best-known service are their certification programs, including certification for Common Operating Environment (COE) Platform, CORBA, Directory, POSIX, Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), , UNIX, and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The Open Group is also the owner of the UNIX trademark. The value of these standards has been greatly eroded due to changes in the Unix marketplace, notably the widespread acceptance of "non-standardized" Unixen like Linux and Mac OS X. More recently there has been an effort to help standarized Linux with the Linux Standard Base, but the success of this program appears to be very limited to date.

The Open Group has since turned to the standardization of business and development practices instead, offering certifications for professionals. Primary among these standards is the IT Architect Certification and TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework).

[edit] Member Forums

The Open Group provides a platform for its members to discuss their requirements, and work jointly on development and adoption of industry standards, to facilitate enterprise integration. (Note: Some of The Open Group documents are only available to members, especially when they are under development.) Based on their area of interest, members can join one or more semi-autonomous Forums, which include: Architecture Forum, Grid Enterprise Services Forum, Identity Management Forum, Jericho Forum,Messaging Forum,Enterprise Management and Quality of Service Forum, Platform Forum,Real Time and Embedded Systems Forum, Security Forum, and Universal Data Element Framework Forum. Members come together at The Open Group’s quarterly conferences and member meetings.

Government Programs The Open Group provides services to the government sector - agencies, suppliers, and companies or organizations set up by governments to advance government goals.

Services to Consortia The Open Group also provides a range of services to consortia and organizations, from initial organization set-up and ongoing operational support to collaboration, standards and best practices development, and assistance with technology transfer. They assist organizations with setting business objectives, strategy and procurement, and also provide certification and test development services.

[edit] History

The Open Group was formed from a merger of the Open Software Foundation (OSF) and X/Open, essentially US and European versions of standards bodies that hoped to create a reasonable commercial response to UNIX System V, then under development by AT&T and Sun Microsystems. Scott McNealy of Sun quipped that "OSF" really stood for "Oppose Sun Forever", and eventually formed the competing Unix International group to counter it. When the value of these standards was diluted by the rapid introduction of Microsoft Windows in the early 1990s, the companies backing the standards lost interest.

OSF and Unix International merged, hoping to provide a single standard that could compete in the marketplace with Windows NT, but this project had little effect. The introduction of Linux further eroded the value of such a standard.