The Open Group
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 best known 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.
Programs
Certification
The Open Group's best-known service are their
certification programs, including certification for the
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 Open Group has also 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).
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 ProgramsThe Open Group provides services to the
government sector - agencies, suppliers, and companies or organizations set up by governments to advance government goals.
Services to ConsortiaThe 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.
History
By the early 1990s, the major Unix players had begun to realize that the standards rivalries known as the
Unix wars were causing all participants more harm than good, leaving Unix open to emerging competition from
Microsoft. The
COSE initiative in 1993 can be considered to be the first unification step and the merger of the
Open Software Foundation (OSF) and
X/Open in 1996 as the ultimate step in the end of those skirmishes. OSF had previously merged with
UNIX International in 1994, meaning that the new entity effectively represented all elements of the Unix community of the time.The value of the UNIX brand has diminished due to changes in the open systems marketplace, notably the widespread acceptance of "non-standardized" Unix-like operating systems such as
GNU/
Linux. More recently there has been an effort by The Open Group in conjunction with the
Linux Foundation to help standardize Linux via the
Linux Standard Base specification, but the success of this initiative appears to be very limited
to date.
Inventions and standards
( ¹ previously maintained, developed by T.O.G. )
External links
Open GroupOpen GroupThe Open GroupOpen GroupThe Open GroupThe Open GroupThe Open GroupThe Open GroupThe Open Group
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