The Open Group
Encyclopedia
The Open Group is a vendor and technology-neutral industry consortium
, currently with over three hundred member organizations. It was formed in 1996 when X/Open
merged with the Open Software Foundation
. Services provided include strategy, management, innovation and research, standards, certification, and test development.
The Open Group is most famous as the certifying body for the UNIX
trademark
, and its publication of the Single UNIX Specification
technical standard, which extends the POSIX
standards and is the official definition of a UNIX system. The Open Group also develops and manages the TOGAF
standard, which is an industry standard
enterprise architecture framework.
The Open Group members include a range of IT buyers and vendors as well as government agencies, for example Capgemini
, Fujitsu
, Oracle
, Hitachi
, HP
, Orbus Software
, IBM, Kingdee
, NEC, SAP
, US Department of Defense, NASA and others.
, Schools Interoperability Framework
(SIF), North American State Lotteries Association (NASPL), and UNIX
.
The Open Group offers certifications for IT professionals. In addition to the TOGAF
(The Open Group Architecture Framework) certification which covers tools, services and people certification, The Open Group also administers the Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) program and the Open Group Certified IT Specialist (Open CITS) certification program; the latter are skills and experience based certification programs.
Members come together at The Open Group’s quarterly conferences and member meetings.
were causing all participants more harm than good, leaving the UNIX industry 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.
In January 1997, the responsibility for the X Window System
was transferred to The Open Group from the defunct X Consortium. In 1999, X.Org was formed to manage the X Window System, with management services provided by The Open Group. The X.Org members made a number of releases up to and including X11R6.8 while The Open Group provided management services. In 2004, X.Org and The Open Group worked together to establish the newly formed X.Org Foundation
who then took control of the x.org domain name, and the stewardship of the X Window System. (See the history of the X Window System).
Consortium
A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....
, currently with over three hundred member organizations. It was formed in 1996 when X/Open
X/Open
X/Open Company, Ltd. was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of information technology. More specifically, the original aim was to define a single specification for operating systems derived from UNIX, to...
merged with the Open Software Foundation
Open Software Foundation
The Open Software Foundation was a not-for-profit organization founded in 1988 under the U.S. National Cooperative Research Act of 1984 to create an open standard for an implementation of the UNIX operating system.-History:...
. Services provided include strategy, management, innovation and research, standards, certification, and test development.
The Open Group is most famous as the certifying body for the UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
, and its publication of the Single UNIX Specification
Single UNIX Specification
The Single UNIX Specification is the collective name of a family of standards for computer operating systems to qualify for the name "Unix"...
technical standard, which extends the POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
standards and is the official definition of a UNIX system. The Open Group also develops and manages the TOGAF
TOGAF
The Open Group Architecture Framework is a framework for enterprise architecture which provides a comprehensive approach for designing, planning, implementation, and governance of an enterprise information architecture...
standard, which is an industry standard
enterprise architecture framework.
The Open Group members include a range of IT buyers and vendors as well as government agencies, for example Capgemini
Capgemini
Capgemini is a French global IT services company, one of the world's largest management consulting, outsourcing and professional services companies with a staff of 114,274 operating in 40 countries. It is headquartered in Paris and was founded in 1967 by Serge Kampf, the current chairman, in...
, Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
, Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
, Hitachi
Hitachi, Ltd.
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Marunouchi 1-chome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The company is the parent of the Hitachi Group as part of the larger DKB Group companies...
, HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
, Orbus Software
Orbus software
Orbus Software is a London-based enterprise architecture and business process modeling software vendor that was named as a 2009 Cool Vendor by Gartner Group. The main reason for this was the Microsoft Visio-based architecture of their modeling tool product, iServer...
, IBM, Kingdee
Kingdee
Kingdee International Software Group Company Limited is a listed company on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.It is a player in the China software industry, an enterprise management software and middle-ware provider in Asia-Pacific region and an online management and e-business...
, NEC, SAP
SAP AG
SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...
, US Department of Defense, NASA and others.
Certification
The Open Group's best-known services are their certification programs, including certification for products and best practices: POSIXPOSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
, Schools Interoperability Framework
Schools Interoperability Framework
The Schools Interoperability Framework, Systems Interoperability Framework , or SIF, is a data sharing open specification for academic institutions from kindergarten through twelfth grade...
(SIF), North American State Lotteries Association (NASPL), and UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
.
The Open Group offers certifications for IT professionals. In addition to the TOGAF
TOGAF
The Open Group Architecture Framework is a framework for enterprise architecture which provides a comprehensive approach for designing, planning, implementation, and governance of an enterprise information architecture...
(The Open Group Architecture Framework) certification which covers tools, services and people certification, The Open Group also administers the Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) program and the Open Group Certified IT Specialist (Open CITS) certification program; the latter are skills and experience based certification programs.
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:- ArchiMateArchiMateArchiMate [Ahr-ki-meyt] is an open and independent enterprise architecture modelling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture within and across business domains in an unambiguous way....
Forum - Architecture Forum
- Enterprise Management
- Identity Management Forum
- Jericho Forum
- Platform Forum
- Real Time and Embedded Systems Forum
- Security Forum
- Trusted Technology Forum
- Universal Data Element Framework Forum
Members come together at The Open Group’s quarterly conferences and member meetings.
Collaboration Services
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 market impact activities. They assist organizations with setting business objectives, strategy and procurement, and also provide certification and test development services. This includes services to the government sector - agencies, suppliers, and companies or organizations set up by governments to advance government goals.History
By the early 1990s, the major UNIX system vendors had begun to realize that the standards rivalries often termed as the Unix warsUnix wars
The Unix wars were the struggles between vendors of the Unix computer operating system in the late 1980s and early 1990s to set the standard for Unix thenceforth.- Origins :...
were causing all participants more harm than good, leaving the UNIX industry open to emerging competition from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
. The COSE initiative in 1993 can be considered to be the first unification step and the merger of the Open Software Foundation
Open Software Foundation
The Open Software Foundation was a not-for-profit organization founded in 1988 under the U.S. National Cooperative Research Act of 1984 to create an open standard for an implementation of the UNIX operating system.-History:...
(OSF) and X/Open
X/Open
X/Open Company, Ltd. was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of information technology. More specifically, the original aim was to define a single specification for operating systems derived from UNIX, to...
in 1996 as the ultimate step in the end of those skirmishes. OSF had previously merged with UNIX International
Unix International
Unix International or UI was an association created in 1988 to promote open standards, especially the Unix operating system. Its most notable members were AT&T and Sun Microsystems, and in fact the commonly accepted reason for its existence was as a counterbalance to the Open Software Foundation ,...
in 1994, meaning that the new entity effectively represented all elements of the Unix community of the time.
In January 1997, the responsibility for the X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
was transferred to The Open Group from the defunct X Consortium. In 1999, X.Org was formed to manage the X Window System, with management services provided by The Open Group. The X.Org members made a number of releases up to and including X11R6.8 while The Open Group provided management services. In 2004, X.Org and The Open Group worked together to establish the newly formed X.Org Foundation
X.Org Foundation
The X.Org Foundation is the organization holding the stewardship for the development of the X Window System. It was founded on 22 January 2004....
who then took control of the x.org domain name, and the stewardship of the X Window System. (See the history of the X Window System).
Inventions and standards
- The ArchiMateArchiMateArchiMate [Ahr-ki-meyt] is an open and independent enterprise architecture modelling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture within and across business domains in an unambiguous way....
Technical standard - The Call Level InterfaceCall Level InterfaceThe Call Level Interface is a software standard defined in ISO/IEC 9075-3:2003. The Call Level Interface defines how a program should send SQL queries to the database management system and how the returned recordsets should be handled by the application in a consistent way...
(the basis for ODBC) - The Common Desktop EnvironmentCommon Desktop EnvironmentThe Common Desktop Environment is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif widget toolkit.- Corporate history :...
(CDE) - The Distributed Computing EnvironmentDistributed Computing EnvironmentThe Distributed Computing Environment is a software system developed in the early 1990s by a consortium that included Apollo Computer , IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, and others. The DCE supplies a framework and toolkit for developing client/server applications...
(the basis for DCOMDistributed component object modelDistributed Component Object Model is a proprietary Microsoft technology for communication among software components distributed across networked computers. DCOM, which originally was called "Network OLE", extends Microsoft's COM, and provides the communication substrate under Microsoft's COM+...
) available at http://opengroup.org/comsource - The Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA)DRDADistributed Relational Database Architecture is a database interoperability standard from The Open Group.DRDA describes the architecture for distributed data. It defines the rules for accessing the distributed data, but it does not provide the actual application programming interfaces to perform...
- The MotifMotif (widget toolkit)In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...
GUI widget toolkit (used in CDE) - The Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM)
- The Single UNIX SpecificationSingle UNIX SpecificationThe Single UNIX Specification is the collective name of a family of standards for computer operating systems to qualify for the name "Unix"...
(SUS) - The SOA Source Book
- TOGAFTOGAFThe Open Group Architecture Framework is a framework for enterprise architecture which provides a comprehensive approach for designing, planning, implementation, and governance of an enterprise information architecture...
(Enterprise Architecture Framework) - The Application Response MeasurementApplication Response MeasurementApplication Response Measurement is an open standard published by the Open Group for monitoring and diagnosing performance bottlenecks within complex enterprise applications that use loosely-coupled designs or service-oriented architectures....
(ARM) standard - The Common Manageability Programming InterfaceCommon Manageability Programming InterfaceThe Common Manageability Programming Interface is an open standard that defines a programming interface between a CIM server and CIM providers.-Overview:The CMPI standard is defined by the of The Open Group and is implementation neutral....
(CMPI) standard - The Universal Data Element FrameworkUniversal Data Element FrameworkThe Universal Data Element Framework provides the foundation for building an enterprise-wide controlled vocabulary. It is a standard way of indexing enterprise information that can produce big cost savings...
(UDEF) standard - The XA SpecificationX/Open XAIn computing, the XA standard is a specification by The Open Group for distributed transaction processing . It describes the interface between the global transaction manager and the local resource manager...