July 1, 1999--OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, announced the election of a new board of directors led by Simon Nicholson (Chrystal Software) as chairperson and Bill Smith (Sun Microsystems) as president. Jonathan Parsons (Xyvision Enterprise Solutions) serves as vice president/secretary/treasurer and Bob Sutor (IBM) as chief strategy officer. Norbert Mikula (DataChannel) serves as chief technical officer and leads the technical track. Mary McRae (DMSi) serves as chief marketing officer and leads the marketing track. Alan Hester (Xerox) serves as director and liaison to the CGM-Open affiliate consortium.

"Never before has OASIS had such a balance of representation from large and small XML companies, from users, vendors and consultants," said McRae who has been involved with the consortium since its inception as SGML Open in 1993.

According to Hester, a top priority for today's OASIS Board will be to increase user membership by offering benefits that address their needs. "A big part of that will be the XML.org industry portal, with its registry and repository that will offer automated public access to XML schemas for electronic commerce, business-to-business transactions, and tools and application interoperability."

"The real commercial value of XML will only be realized when we have pervasive, vendor-neutral standards for interchanging structured data within related industry segments," commented Sutor. "With strong leadership and industry backing, OASIS is establishing itself as an international leader among the small number of organizations that will have significant influence on a broad range of XML vocabularies."

"It is a privilege to work with such experienced, committed XML professionals," said Laura Walker, executive director of OASIS. "In the short time this new Board has been seated, they've already demonstrated visionary leadership and collectively will make significant contributions to the industry on behalf of the entire OASIS membership."

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