Analysis: Group opens out in new directions

IT Dialtone project heads standards body's plans for future development

Beset by rumours of an impending reorganisation, the Open Group standards body has finally revealed some of its future directions, writes Caroline Gabriel.

It aims to get away from its roots in the political Unix wars of the 1980s and become a kind of super-standards body. Under the presidency of former Barclays IT director, Joseph de Feo, it will select technologies from different sources to create an overall standards umbrella called IT Dialtone.

The focus, it claims, will be more on providing a forum for users and for catering to the needs of key vertical markets such as the retail and banking sectors. It also wishes to embrace up-and-coming standards and technologies such as Java and the Internet.

?We were set up to address specific technical issues, but now we will move to specific business solutions,? said Open Group vice president Jeffrey Manton.

This will mean reducing the group?s own research and development activities, in favour of accrediting and branding those from outside sources. This has resulted in a steady downsizing over the past year, and a more radical reorganisation is widely expected.

The organisation insists the changes are not being forced upon it by dwindling membership fees, but by evolution.

The Open Group owns the Unix brand and has established a base specification for the operating system. The group recently released the latest version, Unix 98. The dream of a single Unix may never be realised, but at least there is a single base specification to which all major implementations should conform.

Manton claims the group will deliver results faster by adapting existing technology rather than developing from scratch. The organisation will still own and develop its core technologies, and may take on new development work if users ask for standards in undeveloped technology areas. But its preference will be to take technologies already developed elsewhere and turn them into specifications which it can brand.

Manton believes this will better meet the needs of users as the Open Group seeks to develop a role as a consultancy. Members sign non-disclosure agreements and so can discuss their needs and problems openly and reach consensus about what standards they really need.

Where the Open Group must change dramatically is in the new world of the Internet. This is the aim of de Feo?s IT Dialtone concept ? to make computers as ubiquitous and easy to use as the telephone. ?The World Wide Web Consortium has done most of the work ? we just pick specs that fit into Dialtone,? Manton said.

The two main projects that have surfaced under the Dialtone umbrella are the Network Computer specification, a reference platform for NCs, and the Common Distributed Security Architecture, a technology originally submitted by Intel. The next set of specifications from the body is expected in the next two to three months.

The group is going through a period of uncertainty, but claims it will all become clear in the next four to six weeks. Whatever its new structure, the group says it will still pursue the IT Dialtone concept, and increase its shift towards a user and vertical market focus. It already has a user, de Feo, at its helm, and is trying to get a telco representative onto the board.

When the board is dominated by users rather than IT industry heavyweights, the group may be able to cast off its past.

? Report by VNU Newswire.