[ebxml-dev] Industry Groups Come Together for First InteroperabilitySummit

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

Collaboration, Communication and Convergence
Bring Industry Groups Together for First Interoperability Summit

Boston, MA, USA; 20 November 2001 -- Major standards groups and
consortia from around the world will collaborate at the Interoperability
Summit in Orlando, Florida, 6-7 December 2001. HR-XML, OASIS, OMG (tm),
UN/CEFACT and XBRL.org will host the Interoperability Summit as the
first in a series of meetings aimed at identifying common ground and
coordinating development of electronic business specifications.

"This is not simply another meeting opportunity," explained Ray Walker
Chair of UN/CEFACT's Steering Group--the United Nations body for trade
facilitation and electronic business--and a member of the Management
Group that coordinates, through an MoU, the activities of the four
global dejure standards organizations in e-Business (ISO, IEC, ITU and
UNECE). "The Interoperability Summit Series will begin to identify
concrete intersections between major horizontal and vertical standards
in order to promote acceptance of common models and approaches. The MoU
members look forward to reviewing the outcome of Orlando and to working
more closely together with the consortia in the future."

Registration for the Interoperability Summit currently includes
attendees from Asia, Europe and North America, with representatives from
industry groups, ACORD, AIIM, Air Transport Association, ANSI, HR-XML,
IDEAlliance, IMS Global Learning Consortium, Interoperability
Clearinghouse, OASIS, OMG, Open Applications Group, The Open Group,
UN/CEFACT and XBRL.org. In addition, government agencies such as the
United Kingdom Office of the e-Envoy and the United States Department of
Defense, and global corporations, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Oracle,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Reuters, Rockwell, Sun Microsystems, and others
will contribute their perspectives to the Summit. Registration remains
open at http://www.omg.org/interop/.

"The response has been overwhelming," said Dr. Richard Soley, chairman
and chief executive officer of the OMG. "As standards groups
proliferate, everyone recognizes the waste and confusion caused by
duplication of efforts. The Interoperability Summit will identify
intersections between major horizontal and vertical standards in order
to promote acceptance of common models and approaches."

One item on the agenda will be the creation of a Standards Metadata
Registry, where common metadata can be stored for standards efforts,
promoting interoperability of specifications across different consortia.

"A Standards Metadata Registry will allow groups to publicize their
specifications and discover what other organizations are doing,"
explained Karl Best, director of technical operations for OASIS. "This
will lead to better communication between the various standards bodies,
resulting in less overlap of efforts and interoperability of completed
work."

The first day of the December summit will be devoted to targeting
obstacles and opportunities, driving XML-based standards convergence and
facilitating interoperability strategies amongst all the attendees. The
second day will focus on Human Resources specifications that cross many
industry sectors.

"HR issues like competencies and personal identifiers are fundamental to
most business processes," said Chuck Allen, director of HR-XML
Consortium. "We look forward to the opportunity to share what we're
doing and explore how related work by other standards groups can fit."

The outcome of the first Interoperability Summit will be presented in a
special session at the XML 2001 conference in Orlando on Tuesday, 11
December 2001.

"HR is the first modeling topic we've targeted. Future Interoperability
Summits will address other wide-reaching, horizontal business
functions," noted Louis Matherne, co-chair of the XBRL.org steering
committee. "We're already planning a Summit focused on Procurement for
early 2002."

About HR-XML
HR-XML (http://www.hr-xml.org) is a global, independent, non-profit
consortium dedicated to enabling e-commerce and inter-company exchange
of human resources (HR) data worldwide.  The work of the Consortium
centers on the development and promotion of standardized XML
vocabularies for HR.  HR-XML's current efforts are focused on standards
for staffing and recruiting, compensation and benefits, training and
work force management. HR-XML is represented by its membership in 17
countries.

About OASIS
OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org) is the international, not-for-profit
consortium that advances electronic business by promoting open,
collaborative development of interoperability specifications. With the
United Nations, OASIS sponsors ebXML, a global framework for electronic
business data exchange. OASIS operates XML.ORG, the non-commercial
portal that delivers information on the use of XML in industry. The
XML.ORG Registry provides an open community clearinghouse for
distributing and locating XML application schemas, vocabularies and
related documents. OASIS serves as the home for industry groups
interested in developing XML specifications. OASIS technical work
embraces conformance, security, business transactions, repositories and
other interoperability issues.

About OMG
With well-established standards covering software from design, through
development, to deployment and maintenance, the Object Management Group
(OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration.
Based on the established Object Management Architecture (OMA) and
emerging Model Driven Architecture (MDA), OMG's standards cover
application design and implementation. OMG's Modeling standards include
the UML (Unified Modeling Language) and CWM (Common Warehouse
Metamodel). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is
OMG's standard open platform. OMG also issues the CORBAservices and a
rapidly growing set of industry-specific standards in vertical markets
including healthcare, telecommunications, biotechnology, transportation
and a dozen other areas. The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA,
with an office in Tokyo, Japan as well as international marketing
offices in the UK and Germany, along with a U.S. government
representative in Washington, DC.

About UN/CEFACT
UN/CEFACT (www.uncefact.org) is the United Nations body whose mandate
covers worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade
facilitation and electronic business. Headquartered in Geneva, it has
developed and promoted many tools for the facilitation of global
business processes including UN/EDIFACT, the international EDI standard.
Its current work programme includes such topics as Simpl-edi and Object
Oriented EDI and it strongly supports the development and implementation
of open, interoperable global standards and specifications for
electronic business.

About XBRL.org
XBRL.org (www.xbrl.org) is an international group developing the
eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an XML-based framework
for the preparation and exchange of business reports and data. The
initial goal of XBRL is to provide an XML-based framework that the
global business information supply chain will use to create, exchange,
and analyze financial reporting information including, but not limited
to, regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly financial
statements, general ledger information, and audit schedules.


For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.941.284.0403