Boston, MA, USA; 1 June 2005 — OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. DITA defines an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing many kinds of information in print and on the Web.

DITA consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level. DITA enables organizations to deliver content as closely as possible to the point-of-use, making it ideal for applications such as integrated help systems, web sites, and how-to instruction pages. DITA’s topic-oriented content can be used to exploit new features or delivery channels as they become available.

"DITA has grown well beyond its initial focus on technical documentation and user assistance," noted Don Day of IBM, chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. "DITA’s extensible architecture makes it ideal for content definition across the business–from marketing communications to development specifications and artifacts, from company policies and procedures to news articles–the potential is tremendous. What’s more, industry sectors, such as pharmaceutical, semiconductor, and telecommunications, have the power to standardize on DITA subject-matter vocabularies within their communities."

"DITA is a testament to the benefits of bringing an entire community together to develop an open standard," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "DITA was advanced by users of documentation, such as BMC, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Oracle, Sun, and the U.S. Department of Defense, working with product vendors like Arbortext and Idiom, with input from consulting firms such as Innodata Isogen and others. A variety of perspectives on software development, application implementation, open source tools, training, and localization were incorporated into the open process. The result is that the DITA OASIS Standard delivers an end-to-end solution that meets the needs of the market."

Participation in the OASIS DITA Technical Committee remains open. All those interested in advancing this work, including users, XML tools vendors, and consultants on Information Architecture and Content Management Systems (CMS), are encouraged to join the Committee. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the dita-users mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Support for DITA OASIS Standard

Arbortext "Arbortext enthusiastically participated in making DITA an OASIS Standard, and we started delivering support for DITA in our enterprise publishing software last year. We have high expectations for the widespread implementation and use of DITA," said Paul Grosso, Vice President of Research and Co-founder, Arbortext.

IBM Dave Schell, IBM’s corporate lead for User Technology Strategy and Tools, and management owner of IBM’s internal DITA implementation, affirmed IBM’s donation of DITA to OASIS last year: "With DITA, IBM has found leverage internally for DITA to enable collaboration and reuse across product families. Also, IBM and its OEMs can finally exchange product documentation interoperably, eliminating the expensive and time-consuming conversions that typically impede the business cycle for componentized products. DITA is the foundation for collaboration that enables companies to move ahead on commonalities in information. We’re also evaluating the potential to extend those benefits to educational and research material as well as any other structured material."

Idiom Technologies "DITA 1.0 is an important step in the ongoing adoption of this important standard, both from a content development and publishing perspective," said Eric Silberstein, founder and CTO of Idiom Technologies, Inc. "We believe strongly in the efforts of OASIS and the organization’s ability to garner consensus around important XML standards like DITA. Idiom is committed to helping raise visibility of the significant advantages in cost, quality and time-to-market associated with this compelling architecture, especially the ability to accelerate the move to structured XML content architectures, and the simplification of content reuse on a global scale."

Innodata Isogen "DITA is a solid architectural base for developing modular information systems for technical documentation. It provides many of the important features that SGML architectures were intended to provide, but in an XML-friendly way. We see DITA as leading to more robust and sustainable systems for managing modular, re-usable information assets. In addition, DITA can lower the cost of entry for modular information creation, management, and delivery in much the way DocBook does for more traditionally-structured books," said W. Eliot Kimber, Senior Analyst, Innodata Isogen.

Nokia "Nokia is pleased to see the standardization of DITA since it supports the effective exchange and reuse of information", said Frederick Hirsch, Senior Architect at Nokia and OASIS board member. "We have contributed to developing an open standard in this area since this will enable organization of information by topic for a broad community."

About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DITA, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML Registry, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS DITA Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita

DITA FAQ http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita/faq.php

Cover Pages Technology Report: DITA http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html

Press contact:

Carol Geyer, OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

BOSTON, MA, USA; 23 MAY 2005 — OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. OpenDocument provides a royalty-free, XML-based file format that covers features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents.

"XML doesn’t always mean open. You can hide a lot in a file format. OpenDocument represents an opportunity to ensure truly open file formats for productivity applications, which is why it will receive the enthusiastic support of public sector steering organizations on a global basis," commented James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk. "The participation of enterprises in vertical industries, such as aerospace, will also ensure adoption in the private sector. One key to success will be the royalty free status of the spec; there are no financial penalties associated with developing to it."

"Office productivity applications and the documents they create are key to today’s knowledge economy. Information critical to the long term functioning of any organization is stored in the spreadsheets, presentations, and text documents its employees create," said Michael Brauer of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee. "Today, for the first time in the 25-year history of office applications, such documents can be stored in an open, standardized, and vendor-independent format."

OpenDocument provides a single XML schema for text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. It makes use of existing standards, such as HTML, SVG, XSL, SMIL, XLink, XForms, MathML, and the Dublin Core, wherever possible. OpenDocument has been designed as a package concept, enabling it to be used as a default file format for office applications with no increase in file size or loss of data integrity.

"OpenDocument is a fine example of an OASIS Standard that originated in and continues to be endorsed by the open source community," noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "The work of OpenOffice.org was submitted to OASIS in 2002 by Sun Microsystems with the approval of the OpenOffice.org community for advancement under royalty-free terms, so that it would be freely available to developers and users of any office software application. Now that OpenDocument has been approved as an OASIS Standard, we look forward to its robust use by the many organizations and governments from around the world that have been calling for an open, safe, standardized schema for office documents." Gannon referenced OpenDocument implementations in software from Novell, OpenOffice.org, Stellent, and Sun Microsystems, as well as several other open source projects, as evidence of significant support in the marketplace.

Future plans for the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee include extending the standard to encompass additional areas of applications and users, as well as adapting it to incorporate ongoing developments in office applications. All those interested in advancing this work, including governments, open source initiatives, educational institutions, and software providers, are encouraged to participate in the Committee. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the opendocument-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Support for OpenDocument OASIS Standard

"IBM recognizes the importance of a standards-based document format. Use of open, non-proprietary formats will facilitate seamless collaboration between vendors, customers and partners and ensure the maintenance of corporate and government knowledge," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president, Software Standards, IBM. "IBM supports the OASIS OpenDocument formats, and we believe the standardization is a major accomplishment in an important area."

"Sun believes in the power of open standards to enhance business productivity and to stimulate innovation by preserving the intellectual property rights of content creators," said Tim Bray, Technology Director at Sun Microsystems. "Sun is a founding member of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee, and Sun’s StarOffice 8 productivity suite, based on the OpenOffice.org project, uses OpenDocument as its default file format."

About OASIS:
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML Registry, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS OpenDocument Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office

OpenDocument FAQ http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/faq.php

Press contact:

Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 17 May 2005 – Members of the OASIS international standards consortium announced plans to collaborate on a standardized method for expressing software installation characteristics required for lifecycle management in distributed, multi-platform environments. The new OASIS Solution Deployment Descriptor (SDD) Technical Committee will develop schemas to describe the characteristics of installable units of software, relevant for core aspects of deployment, configuration, and maintenance.

"In order to increase automation across the life cycle while preserving the option to deploy heterogeneous infrastructure platforms, standards for deployment, configuration and maintenance schemas are essential. This is an important piece in the broader picture of the agile business," said David Sprott, CEO of analyst firm, CBDI Forum.

"Currently, deployment and lifecycle management of interrelated software sets is predominantly a manual operation, because there is no standardized way to express installation packaging for distributed enterprise applications," explained Thomas Studwell of IBM, proposed chair of the OASIS SDD Committee. "Our work to define a standard for describing the packaging and the means to express dependencies and various lifecycle management operations within the package will alleviate these problems and subsequently enable automation of what are now highly manual and error-prone tasks."

The new OASIS committee will define XML schemas for SDDs, a package format to associate SDDs, resource content, and software artifacts. SDDs will describe the aggregation of installable units at all levels of the software stack as well as requirements of targets onto which the solution can be deployed. The resulting XML schemas will be partitioned to allow for layered implementations covering the range of applications from the definition of atomic units of software to complex, multi-platform, heterogeneous solutions.

"The SDD effort represents another exciting addition to the growing OASIS portfolio of standards work for the SOA and grid computing space," observed James Bryce Clark, OASIS director of standards development. "The OASIS SDD Committee will benefit by close association with developers of related specifications, including the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) and Data Center Markup Language (DCML), both of which are also being advanced within our consortium." Clark noted that the new OASIS Committee also plans to coordinate its efforts with activities of the Global Grid Forum (GGF), Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi), and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).

The OASIS SDD Technical Committee will operate under the Royalty Free on Limited Terms Mode, as defined by the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. The Committee’s first meeting will be held 1 June 2005, and participation remains open to all companies, non-profit groups, and individuals. As with all OASIS projects, archives of the Committee’s work will be accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment.

Industry Support for SDD

"Software deployment and IT life cycle management on distributed, multiplatform systems is fundamental to self-managing systems, and we are delighted with the formation of the technical committee to develop this essential standard," said Alan Ganek, CTO, Tivoli Software & vice president, Autonomic Computing, IBM. "We are excited to see IT leaders collaborating to assure interoperability across the industry and address customers’ need for improved manageability."

"As a leader in multiplatform software deployment, Zero G is proud to be a principal contributor to the SDD specification," said Eric N. Shapiro, CEO at Zero G Software, Inc. "Our new SolutionArchitect product is the first of its kind to bridge the gap between development and operations, driving down software lifecycle management costs. SolutionArchitect uses the SDD specification to capture and communicate the requirements, structure, and deployment workflow of distributed enterprise applications."

About OASIS
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information

OASIS SDD Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/sdd

Cover Pages Technology Report: "Standards for Automated Resource Management in the Computing Environment"

Press contact

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 10 May 2005 – Members of the OASIS international consortium have agreed to advance development of the WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-RM Policy specifications within the OASIS open standards process. The new OASIS Web Services Reliable Exchange (WS-RX) Technical Committee will broaden development of the specifications that comprise both protocol and policy assertions for reliable message exchange.

"OASIS is happy to serve as the nexus for reliable messaging work in the Web services arena and service-oriented architectures generally," noted James Bryce Clark, director of standards development at OASIS. "We’re pleased to see software developers acknowledge the benefits of bringing their work to an open standards process, where all interested and affected parties can contribute to the outcome."

Gartner, Inc. Research Director, Charles Abrams, noted, "Reliable messaging is key to the future growth of business-to-business Web services. The need for secure and verifiable transactions among trading partners is paramount, for both narrow supply chains and broad industry groupings. Until now, there have been two duplicative efforts, WS-Reliability, an OASIS Standard, and WSRM, a major vendor-backed specification effort. This has caused some end user confusion and concern. Now that both efforts are under the auspices of OASIS, with major vendor support from both WS-Reliability and WSRM, end user needs should be better served. Eventual reconciliation of both efforts under the administration of OASIS, which is directing more web service standards development efforts than any other organization, will measurably progress advanced web service utilization."

Authors of the WS-ReliableMessaging v1.0 and WS-RM Policy v1.0 specifications, BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, and TIBCO Software, plan to submit their work to the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee at its first meeting. Changes to these documents, as well as other contributions, will be considered and evaluated based on technical merit, business requirements of users, and the Committee’s charter.

"The standardization of the WS-ReliableMessaging specification in OASIS is an important initiative," said Paul Fremantle of IBM, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee. "We believe there is strong demand in the marketplace for reliable Web services interactions, and our work will be key for organizations as they start to implement Web services for secure reliable business-to-business communications. For example, our work will allow businesses to exchange messages, such as purchase order entries, with the assurance of reliable delivery in an open and interoperable way."

"It is exciting and essential for the future adoption of this pivotal Web services technology that the OASIS WS-RX Committee has received such wide support from the Consortium’s membership" said Sanjay Patil of SAP, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee. "Input from the broad community within OASIS will bring about a widely-adopted set of technologies for the reliable and robust exchange of business information as part of a Service Oriented Architecture."

To date, more than 25 organizations have indicated plans to join the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee. Participation in the group remains open to all companies, non-profit groups, and individuals. The Committee especially seeks input from vendors of Web services products, software architects, and end users implementing solutions that require interoperable reliable messaging.

The OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee will operate under the Royalty Free on RAND Terms Mode defined by the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. As with all OASIS projects, archives of the Committee’s work will be accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment.

Industry Support for WS-RX

Actional "Our customers, and the market as a whole, are eagerly awaiting a standard for reliable messaging exchange that carries broad industry adoption," said Dan Foody, CTO of Actional, "The OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee is an excellent catalyst for this, and Actional is excited to participate."

Adobe Systems "Reliability is a critical requirement for Web services," said Melonie Warfel, director of standards at Adobe Systems. "As Web services are being deployed in complex application integration and collaborative business processes, the standardization effort underway with the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee is an important step in ensuring the reliability of those services."

BEA Systems "BEA Systems is pleased to see that there is critical mass for a single reliable messaging specification. BEA has pioneered open and RF reliable messaging specifications and offered support in WebLogic for the past three years, and BEA looks forward to customers having wider choices for interoperability," said Dave Orchard, Technical Director, office of the CTO at BEA Systems.

DataPower "Our customers use Web services to conduct billions of dollars worth of business, and they have been demanding reliable messaging solutions based on open standards. Until today, customers had to choose between full reliability and broadly-supported, open standards," said Eugene Kuznetsov, CTO and chairman at DataPower. "Finally, with the WS-RX initiative, and thanks to the good citizenship of the companies involved with WSRM in contributing their work to OASIS, the SOA industry will have an open, broadly supported and reliable messaging protocol."

Hitachi "Hitachi believes that the commons consisting of international standards is a crucial resource and an accelerant for technological progress. The maintenance of this commons requires the cooperation and unity of many who oftentimes travel different paths and may from time to time disagree on any specific. We are committed to work together with all to achieve the best and most positive result," said Takao Nakamura, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi, Ltd.

IONA "There is no question that the mainstream adoption of Web services to support enterprise computing initiatives, including SOA, requires the reliable exchange of messages between different services and applications independent of vendor, platform or protocol," explained Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA. "In fact, our customers consistently mention that applications such as EDI replacement or electronic funds transfer cannot even be considered without reliable messaging. With WS-RM submitted to OASIS, and a new technical committee formed to progress the specification, we’re one step closer to the standardization of this important part of the WS-* stack."

Microsoft "The breadth of industry support for the submission of WS-ReliableMessaging to OASIS is an important step in the development of the WS-* architecture," said Ari Bixhorn, Director of Web Services Strategy for Microsoft. "WS-ReliableMessaging is a critical component in enabling customers to build secure, reliable and transacted Web services."

Oracle "Oracle is committed to the use of standards for exchanging secure, reliable messages with Web services," said Donald Deutsch, vice president, Standards and Strategy Architecture, Oracle. "Oracle is pleased to be a co-sponsor of the newly formed OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee. Standards-based interoperability is critical to broad Web services adoption, and reliable messaging is a key enabling technology to achieve it."

Reactivity< "Reactivity is looking forward to contributing to the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee from our extensive experience gained through real-world Web services deployments," said Andrew Nash, chief technology officer at Reactivity. "Reliable message exchange is crucial to ensuring Web Services address the issues of sophisticated business systems and forms a significant component of an XML infrastructure."

SAP "SAP continues to demonstrate commitment to platform openness and interoperability, and we welcome the opportunity to work with other industry leaders to accomplish this goal through our proposed leadership role in the WS-RX specification development effort," said George Paolini, senior vice president of Platform Ecosystem Development at SAP. "Enterprise Service Architecture is SAP’s design for a service-enabled business process platform. Web services standards for enterprise-readiness and reliability will benefit our customers and partners as part of the SAP Platform Ecosystem."

SeeBeyond "As a proponent of reliable and secure message-based communication, SeeBeyond is pleased to announce our membership in the new OASIS Web WS-RX Technical Committee," said Alex Andrianopoulos, Vice President of Product Management & Standards for SeeBeyond. "SeeBeyond has long supported the advancement of Web services technologies to further enable interoperability and has been a direct contributor to previous OASIS work in this technology area. SeeBeyond looks forward to joining the other committee members in leveraging such previous work towards the evolution of a reliable message exchange protocol into a standard with wide industry acceptance."

Sonic Software "Sonic is excited to be involved in the formation of the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee," said Glen Daniels, Standards Strategist for Sonic Software. "We continue to believe that interoperable reliable messaging is a critical component in enabling real-world distributed SOAs. We are confident this TC will provide a framework within which the industry can come to an accord on this technology, taking into account all we have learned both as implementers and as a community in the past few years."

Sun Microsystems "This development represents the first step toward a convergence of standards in the critical area of Web services reliable messaging," said Ed Julson, Director, of Web Services Standards at Sun Microsystems. "Sun’s involvement highlights our emphasis on interoperability through support for open, royalty-free standards."

webMethods "We are very pleased to continue with our Web services standards leadership by working with other industry leaders in co-proposing the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee," said Kristin Weller Muhlner, executive vice president, Product Development, webMethods. "The WS-RX work is a tremendous step forward in reliable message-based communications that will enable our customers to develop complex but secure and reliable enterprise class business applications based on Web services."

About OASIS OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML Registry, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ws-rx

Cover Pages Technology Report: Reliable Messaging http://xml.coverpages.org/reliableMessaging.html

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Amsterdam, Netherlands; 4 May 2005 – Users, vendors, governments, and researchers from Europe and around the world will gather in Amsterdam, 24 May 2005, to examine and discuss advances in e-Business standards at the OASIS Open Standards Day. Sponsored by the international, not-for-profit consortium, OASIS, the event will feature presentations on key OASIS Standards and specifications that are of particular interest to the European community. OASIS Open Standards Day will be held in conjunction with the IDEAlliance XTech 2005 Conference & Exhibition (formerly XML Europe).

The OASIS Open Standards Day programme will feature presentations on the latest eGovernment projects as well as on XML for tax-related information. It will provide updates on widely applicable specifications, such as the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL), Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) OASIS Standard, Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) and Web Services Notification (WSN) specifications. The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 and its interaction with the related profile adapters in eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) and WS-Security will also be explored, as will the Product Life Cycle Support (PLCS) specification. A European Justice System’s use of the ebXML Messaging OASIS Standard will provide perspective on real-world deployment of standards.

"The OASIS Open Standards Day at XTech presents an exciting opportunity for the developers of today’s most influential standards to interface with implementers and government representatives in Europe," noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. Gannon will provide the keynote address for the event, which will highlight the growing number of European e-Government and e-Health initiatives endorsing OASIS work. Attendance is open to all interested parties. Registrations will be accepted for the OASIS Open Standards Day alone or as part of a full XTech conference pass.

More information:
http://www.xtech-conference.org/2005/oasisosd.asp

About OASIS:
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Press contact:
Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 3 May 2005— International standards consortium, OASIS, announced the formation of a new committee to develop a core reference model that will guide and foster the creation of specific, service-oriented architectures (SOA). The new OASIS SOA Reference Model (SOA-RM) Technical Committee will promote the continued development of multiple SOAs and related standards by acting as a guide for those writing SOAs and an analysis of their functional components.

"The term SOA is used in an increasing number of contexts with differing-and even conflicting-meanings," said Duane Nickull of Adobe Systems, chair of the OASIS SOA-RM Technical Committee. "If SOA is architecture, as the name implies, then we should define it as architecture. The reference model we create will be useful for the entire industry, offering a way to preserve a common layer of understanding across multiple service oriented environments and architectures."

Specifically, the SOA reference model will offer an understanding of the core elements within a service oriented environment and the associations and relationships among those elements. The reference model itself will not be directly tied to any standards, technologies or other concrete implementation details. Rather, it will be an abstract, designed to be used as a tool by software and enterprise architects developing specific SOAs.

"In addition to vendors, there is a significant contingent of SOA end users from across the globe rallying around this work to define the basic, common elements of any service-oriented system," noted James Bryce Clark, Director of Standards Development at OASIS. He cited participation from government agencies such as Japan’s Electronic Commerce Promotion Council, Canada’s Public Works and Government Services, and USA’s Department of Homeland Security, as well as users that include Boeing, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Mitre, and VISA.

The OASIS SOA-RM Technical Committee already has more than 45 members, and participation remains open to all organizations and individuals, especially those directly involved in the design, documentation, or implementation of SOAs. As with all OASIS projects, archives of the Committee’s work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment.

Industry Support for SOA-RM

Booz Allen Hamilton "Booz Allen Hamilton is proud to participate in the development of a standardized SOA reference model" said Rebekah Metz, Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. "A cornerstone of the service-oriented approach is encouraging the growth of diverse yet interoperable implementations. The planned SOA reference model will provide a unified foundation from which the architecture for such implementations can evolve. We look forward to sharing the benefits of this important concept with our clients."

Infravio "This week, Infravio increased sponsorship of OASIS to participate in the OASIS SOA-RM TC and future SOA work," said Miko Matsumura, vice president of marketing at Infravio. "As OASIS moves ‘up the stack’ it becomes increasingly important to Infravio and our focus on SOA customer’s business requirements."

Reactivity "SOA success requires a reliable and flexible reference model enterprises can use as the basis for implementing their own infrastructures to support SOA," said Andrew Nash, CTO at Reactivity. "Reactivity has been a leader in the development of the SOA infrastructure and believes this OASIS Technical Committee presents a great opportunity to for all vendors to align their efforts to simplify SOA for the enterprise."

SOA Software "As a leader in Service Oriented Architecture Infrastructure, we are focused on rapid implementation and adoption of emerging standards and are deeply committed to the standards process," said Roberto Medrano, Executive Vice President at SOA Software. "The SOA reference model will promote a deeper understanding of the value employing a correctly designed service-oriented architecture can bring to large enterprise and government organizations."

About OASIS OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS SOA-RM Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/soa-rm

Cover Pages Technology Report: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): http://xml.coverpages.org/soa.html

Press contact: Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

LOS ANGELES, CA, USA; 20 APRIL 2005 — Fourteen organizations joined together for the first time to demonstrate interoperability of the WS-Security OASIS Standard at the Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit in Los Angeles today. WS-Security, developed by the OASIS Web Services Security (WSS) TC, delivers a technical foundation for implementing security functions such as integrity and confidentiality in messages implementing higher-level Web services applications.

Gartner analyst, Ray Wagner, describes WS-Security as "the standard for the majority of Web services…committing to it now will allow enterprises to easily modify the security profile of deployed Web services in the future."*

WS-Security allows a wide range of key security methods such as authentication and access control to be reliably, readily associated with SOAP messages. The OASIS InterOp at the Gartner Summit demonstrated the exchange of messages protected by WS-Security using the X.509 Token Profile.

"It is gratifying to see so many vendors supporting the WS-Security OASIS Standard with their interoperable implementations," observed Hal Lockhart of BEA Systems, lead of the OASIS InterOp team. "We came together with a common goal: to make it clear to all implementers-not just the larger enterprises that have already embraced the standard-that the time is right to adopt WS-Security."

Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, agreed. "WS-Security provides a key component for the broader security frameworks that users need. Many of the participants in today’s InterOp are also deeply involved in advancing other OASIS Standards for security, such as the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). The synergy between these efforts goes a long way towards meeting the marketplace’s need for a cohesive fit between standards," said Gannon, who also participated in Gartner’s "Power Panel: A Conversation on Standards" at the event.

Vendors Collaborate on WS-Security Interoperability

DataPower "DataPower has a unique first-hand perspective on the importance of interoperability of WS-Security to end-users having supported early versions in customer deployments since late 2002," said Eugene Kuznetsov, CTO at DataPower. "It’s easy for a vendor to claim support for WS-Security, but only independent interop testing ensures that it will work for customers. Now that WS-Security is an official OASIS Standard, this interoperability event is the final step in demonstrating the maturity of Web services security."

IBM "When we originally worked on this standard with Microsoft and other partners, we saw WS-Security as the foundation of secure Web services," said Anthony Nadalin, Chief Security Architect of IBM Software Group and IBM Distinguished Engineer. "We are pleased to see the work we took to OASIS, and saw become a standard, get such broad industry adoption."

Microsoft "The WS-Security standard is the cornerstone to building secure Web Services and is composable with the broader WS-* architecture where secure, reliable and transacted Web services are achieved," said Ari Bixhorn, Director, Web Services Strategies for Microsoft. "This demo provides an example of trusted interoperability and showcases the companies’ commitment to evolving standards that meet customer demands for interoperability and security across heterogeneous systems. Microsoft has played a key role in the development of Web services standards, and WS-Security delivers on this roadmap."

Oracle "It is evident that Web services are rapidly becoming the cornerstone for integration and B2B transactions," said Hasan Rizvi, vice president, Development at Oracle. "Our participation in the WS-Security OASIS demonstration illustrates Oracle’s support for the standard and its ability to help enable the secure exchange of information among partners."

Panacea Software "Panacea Software is delighted to demonstrate our 100% BPEL-based implementation of WS-Security at the OASIS Interop. We provide complete end-to-end Web services-enabled solutions to build, deploy, run, manage, monitor and optimize business processes in alignment with both corporate IT and web strategies across the extended enterprise," said Ajay Sarkar, CEO, Panacea Software. "WS-Security is the key to providing the security required in our end-to-end business process solution set."

Reactivity "WS-Security has matured significantly and gained more widespread adoption since Reactivity delivered our first XML security product in June 2002," said Andrew Nash, CTO at Reactivity. "As a member of the OASIS WSS Technical Committee, Reactivity is proud to have contributed to the development of WS-Security, and we are pleased to participate in this OASIS InterOp event at the Gartner Summit in LA."

Sun Microsystems "As an OASIS Foundational Sponsor, we were very keen to participate with other leading innovators to demonstrate the value of the WS-Security OASIS Standard as it enforces Sun’s commitment to security, interoperability and open standards – central themes of the Sun Java Enterprise System," said Rich Sharples, Group Product Marketing Manager, Application Platform Products, Sun Microsystems.

Systinet "Systinet has a longstanding commitment to supporting interoperability initiatives for Web services and SOA," said Luc Clement, Senior Product Manager, Systinet, and co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Technical Committee. "Interoperability between different vendor products is essential. We’re pleased to support the WS-Security OASIS InterOp."

TIBCO " As an active participant in the OASIS WS-Security Technical Committee, which contributes to the evolution of this security standard, TIBCO is committed to the development of such open industry standards and the widespread adoption of Web services," said Aiaz Kazi, General Manager, Business Integration, TIBCO Software Inc. "The WS- Security OASIS InterOp is a key step that showcases the power of a standards-based and secure exchange of information between Web service producers and consumers. Enterprises will greatly benefit from the collaborative efforts of the software industry’s top leaders participating in this InterOp."

Verisign "WS-Security has increasingly become the basis of all SOAP security standards, providing a sound foundation for implementing reliable security parameters in Web services security. As an original author of the specification, VeriSign is pleased to see such broad adoption," said Hemma Prafullchandra, director, Advanced Products and Research Group, VeriSign. "The significant number of companies participating in this collaboration shows that we have proven that future SOAP security standards in development are building on strong, trusted technology."

* From Gartner Research ‘Web Services Security Advances With Approval of Key Standard’ April 2004.

About OASIS OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS Web Services Security Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wss

Press contact: Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

BOSTON, MA, USA; 5 APRIL 2005 – Issues of interoperability at the business layer bring standards developers and users together at the OASIS Symposium in New Orleans, 24-29 April 2005. The program will feature two days of presentations related to "The Future of XML Vocabularies," where attendees will explore options for solving cross-sectoral needs for the global exchange of business information. Mitchell Kapor, chairman of the Open Source Applications Foundation, will provide the keynote address for the event, which will also include technical committee meetings, tutorials, training sessions, and the annual OASIS member meeting.

"The global economy depends on a foundation of openness and the coordinated production of an information commons–one which will not replace but transform proprietary ownership and market competition," said Kapor. "I look forward to discussing the treatment of intellectual assets with OASIS members, as the consortium takes steps to clarify its own intellectual property rights policy."

The program also includes a keynote by Joanne Friedman, CEO of ConneKted Minds, and presentations on OASIS work including the Universal Business Language (UBL), Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), and the XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF).

Representatives from Boeing, Cendant, General Motors, JPMorganChase, and Lockheed Martin will discuss "The Impact of Vocabularies on End User SOA Strategies" in an industry panel moderated by DataPower. Executives from the Open Applications Group, Open Geospatial Consortium, Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium, RosettaNet, and UN/CEFACT comprise a second panel where standards bodies draw on their experiences to explore "The Past As a Guide to the Future" for vocabulary development. This panel will be moderated by SAP.

"This year’s Symposium speakers are an amazingly diverse and impressive representation of the community. The agenda brings together some of the most prominent pioneers of Internet e-Business with technology leaders in Web services and SOA, major end users, governments, and industry consortia,” stated Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. “This type of broad, influential participation is essential if we are to solve the universal semantic interoperability challenges that affect businesses in our global economy."

The Symposium is open to both members and non-members of OASIS. Sponsors of the event include BEA Systems, DataPower, HP, IBM, Innodata Isogen, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. The program is coordinated by the OASIS Technical Advisory Board and chaired by Jishnu Mukerji of HP and William Cox.

Additional Information:

OASIS Symposium: http://www.oasis-open.org/events/symposium_2005/

About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Press contact: Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

BOSTON, MA, USA; 14 MARCH 2005 — OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) version 2.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. SAML v2.0 enables the secure exchange of authentication, attribute, and authorization information between disparate security domains, making vendor-independent Web single sign-on and secure e-business transactions possible. Version 2.0 adds key functions to create and manage federated networks that combine and appropriately share pre-existing repositories of identity information.

"Prior to SAML, there was no XML-based standard that enabled the exchange of security information between a security system and an application," said John Pescatore, analyst at Gartner, Inc. "SAML provides a standard XML schema for specifying authentication, attribute, and authorization decision statements, and it also specifies a Web services-based request/reply protocol for exchanging these statements."

"The number of digital identities in today’s world is exploding and business partners need better ways to federate and manage those identities in order to control access to their resources in the face of growing regulatory and compliance requirements," noted Rob Philpott of RSA Security, co-chair of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee. "SAML v2.0 is the convergence point for the major identity federation initiatives deployed in the industry today; that is, SAML v1.x, Liberty ID-FF, and the Internet2’s Shibboleth effort. With the release of SAML v2.0, the industry now has a very robust, proven foundation upon which to build identity-based solutions that meet those requirements."

SAML leverages core Web services standards including XML, SOAP, Transport Layer Security (TLS), XML Signature (XMLSIG), and XML Encryption (XMLENC).

"SAML v2.0 builds on the success of SAML v1.1 by providing a full-featured foundation for identity federation on the Internet," explained Prateek Mishra of Principal Identity, co-chair of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee. "Some of its features fill in important ‘gaps’ observed in practical deployments: for example, the attribute profiles and metadata specification simplify agreement between businesses participating in a federation. Other features such as encryption, pseudonyms and user consent enable confidentiality and privacy of information about users."

"SAML v2.0 has the benefit of real implementations in a variety of industries to help the market drive adoption," stated Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "Major technology vendors are already shipping identity management products and appliances built on SAML, and governments are incorporating it into their architectures. Many other key XML standards already have defined clear profiles for working with this flexible and extensible OASIS Standard for the federated model of identity management."

Over 27 member organizations globally participate in this ongoing work, including representatives of AOL, BEA Systems, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, Computer Associates, Entrust, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Neustar, Nokia, Novell, Oracle, RSA Security, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. Participation remains open to all, and suppliers, end-users, and systems integrators are invited to join OASIS to advance the continued development and adoption of SAML. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the saml-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Industry Support for SAML 2.0 OASIS Standard

BEA Systems "In a relatively short time, SAML has become one of the most widely accepted standards for exchanging authorization data in Federated Identity environments. SAML 2.0 reflects this broad support in the number of organizations and individuals who contributed new features to it. BEA looks forward to increasing our support for SAML in future product offerings," said Hal Lockhart, Principal Engineering Technologist, BEA Systems.

Cordance "SAML 2.0 will be the keystone that enables many other elements of XML trust infrastructure to interoperate. For example, the upcoming XRI 2.0 specifications from the OASIS XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) Technical Committee uses SAML 2.0 assertions to provide trusted XRI resolution services. The OASIS XDI (XRI Data Interchange) Technical Committee also plans to foster trusted data interchange relationships using SAML 2.0," said Drummond Reed, CTO Cordance Corporation, co-chair, OASIS XRI and XDI Technical Committees.

DataPower "SAML is fast becoming the dominant Web services standard for federating ‘identity as a service’, and promises to break the traditional lock between Web SSO ‘shim’ and server. The 2.0 version of SAML and the very successful 12-vendor OASIS SAML Interop lab at the RSA Conference are further proof of SAML’s maturity," said Eugene Kuznetsov, CTO and Chairman of DataPower.

Nokia "Nokia has long recognized the importance of security and identity management to Web services and is pleased to see SAML v2.0 reach standardization," said Frederick Hirsch, Senior Architect at Nokia. "SAML v2.0 will do much to reduce market confusion and to drive adoption of federated identity technology, converging Liberty Alliance Federation Framework, SAML v1.1, and Shibboleth technologies. Achieving SAML v2.0 standardization is a major accomplishment in an important area."

Oracle "The SAML 2.0 OASIS Standard marks a huge step forward in delivering on the promise of secure Web Services," said Uppili Srinavasan, senior director, Identity Management and Security Products, Oracle. "Organizations can now rely on SAML to facilitate secure interactions not just among employees within the enterprise, but extend this security beyond the traditional enterprise to the broader trading community consisting of customers, partners and suppliers."

Reactivity "SAML has rapidly been established as the accepted mechanism for making authoritative electronic assertions about user authentication and identity information. Reactivity supports the enhancements in SAML v2.0 that build on that success to provide a comprehensive framework for federating identities, controlling user sessions and identifying web transactions," said Andrew Nash, CTO of Reactivity.

RSA Security "By accepting SAML v2.0 as an OASIS Standard, the technology industry has demonstrated its commitment to delivering open, interoperable solutions that enable companies to leverage the benefits of seamless identity federation," said Jason Lewis, vice president of product marketing and management at RSA Security. "RSA Security is proud to have contributed to the development of SAML, and we look forward to continuing to support initiatives which provide the greatest flexibility and choice to our customers."

Sun Microsystems "Sun continues to drive identity management and Web services standards both through our participation with organizations, such as OASIS and the Liberty Alliance, as well as providing full support of the latest industry standards within our products," said Sara Gates, vice president identity management, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun is proud to have been a supporter of SAML from its inception, and we are excited to see it approved by the members of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee as an OASIS Standard."

About OASIS: OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WSS, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS Security Services Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/security

SAML FAQ http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/security/faq.php

Cover Pages Technology Report: SAML http://xml.coverpages.org/saml.html

Press contact:

Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 9 March 2005 — OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSDM enables management applications to be built using Web services, allowing resources to be controlled by many managers through a single interface.

"The industry has been wrestling with the complexity of managing business systems for years," said Cameron Haight, Research Vice President, Gartner, Inc. "One of the main challenges stems from the diversity of products enterprises use to construct their business systems. Several providers of these core infrastructure components have come together to address this classic problem by creating an integration layer between managers and the different protocols used to instrument resources. That integration layer is called WSDM, and now that the standard has been built, it is hoped that other technology providers will come on board to help complete the picture."

"WSDM offers a key to solving a long standing pain point for resource providers, management software vendors, and their customers," said Heather Kreger of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee. "By integrating heterogeneous resources into heterogeneous management software using heterogeneous protocols and platforms, WSDM uses Web services to start solving the management integration problem."

WSDM consists of two specifications, Management Using Web Services (MUWS) and Management Of Web Services (MOWS). WSDM MUWS defines how to represent and access the manageability interfaces of resources as Web services. It defines a basic set of manageability capabilities, such as resource identity, metrics, configuration, and relationships, which can be composed to express the capability of the management instrumentation. WSDM MUWS also provides a standard management event format to improve interoperability and correlation. WSDM MOWS defines how to manage Web services as resources and how to describe and access that manageability using MUWS. MOWS provides mechanisms and methodologies that enable manageable Web services applications to interoperate across enterprise and organizational boundaries.

"WSDM represents the first step in defining the Web services stack layers for Management," noted Winston Bumpus of Dell, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee. "Simultaneously, WSDM MOWS is also the first step in Web services management."

Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, stated, "OASIS has been very pleased with the amount of participation in WSDM development and the support we’ve received from other standards organizations, including the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and the Global Grid Forum (GGF). We appreciate their commitment to collaborate on a consistent management standard for the Web services community. We look forward to engaging with more industry groups and standards organizations as adoption of WSDM grows."

WSDM was developed by members of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee, which includes representatives of Actional, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Novell, TIBCO, and others. Participation remains open to all, and suppliers, end-users and system integrators are invited to join OASIS to advance the continued development and adoption of WSDM. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the wsdm-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Industry Support for WSDM

Computer Associates "The WSDM OASIS Standard will significantly enhance interoperability among management applications and tools, enabling IT organizations to both optimize service levels and reduce operational costs," said Muhi Majzoub, CA’s vice president of development. "CA WSDM, our solution for managing services in a service-oriented architecture, will leverage this important new OASIS Standard to help customers maximize the business value generated by their increasingly complex service-oriented environments."

DataPower "DataPower is proud to have been one of the first Web services security vendors to implement an early version of WSDM in 2003, and as part of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee, we are delighted with its approval as an OASIS Standard. WSDM is critical, not just for managing Web services, but for using Web services to manage all other systems within the enterprise, on demand. Just like SNMP did in its time, WSDM breaks the lock-in between the managed node and the management server," said Eugene Kuznetsov, CTO and Chairman of DataPower.

Fujitsu "Fujitsu is enthusiastic about the potential of open standards in the area of Web services-based management. The WSDM specifications, MUWS V1.0 and MOWS V 1.0, represent a usable architecture for distributed management, which provides a stable starting point for the design of open management systems. Fujitsu plans an implementation of these WSDM specifications and will in turn provide products reflecting the WSDM V1.0 specifications along with the enhanced capabilities expected from the future work of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee," said Seigo Hirosue, General Manger, Strategy and Technology Division, Software Group, Fujitsu Limited.

HP "HP has actively supported the WSDM work from the start, including submitting the Web Services Management Framework as input for the work of the technical committee," said Mark Potts, CTO of HP Management Software. "We see WSDM 1.0 as a key milestone in providing a standard-based environment for loosely-coupled management interactions, as called for by HP’s Adaptive Enterprise strategy."

IBM "Many of our customers have already experienced substantial business benefits from initial SOA deployments," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president, IBM Software Standards. "WSDM will enable them to achieve additional benefits by providing a common approach that simplifies the management of existing solutions as well as future applications that are planned to be included in their SOA. WSDM will allow complex IT infrastructures to become more self-managing, greatly reducing system management burdens so IT professionals can concentrate on business issues and innovation."

TIBCO "WSDM is an integral part of TIBCO’s Web services enabled technology and the release of this key specification by OASIS is the realization of our vision for the widespread adoption of Web services," said Matt Quinn, Vice President, Product Strategy, TIBCO Software Inc. "WSDM provides an essential conduit to bridge the gap between IT Asset management and BPM making it possible for IT and business managers to understand and analyze operational performance as it relates to business-critical situations, then initiate the appropriate actions to ensure business continuity."

Additional information:

OASIS WSDM Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsdm

WSDM FAQ: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsdm/faq.php

Cover Pages Technology Report: http://xml.coverpages.org/computingResourceManagement.html

About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WSS, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Press contact:

Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 8 March 2005 — OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that Jim Hughes of HP has been appointed to chair the OASIS Board of Directors and that Bob Glushko of the University of California at Berkeley has been elected to the Board. Working with fellow directors, members, and staff, Hughes and Glushko will provide business leadership to advance OASIS as a major standards-setting body for Web services, e-business, security, and other applications.

Hughes, who has served on the OASIS Board since 2001, noted, "OASIS is now reaching a broader and more diverse set of implementers with e-business standards that accelerate the adoption of advanced technologies. The Board will continue drive this acceleration by giving value to both the industry at-large and our members."

Former entrepreneur, Bob Glushko, has been a member of OASIS since the consortium was founded as SGML Open in 1993. Now, as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Information Management and Systems, he directs Berkeley’s Center for Document Engineering and teaches courses on XML, business process modeling, information architecture, content management, and model-based application development.

With a diverse background that includes consulting, founding start-ups, working for large companies and now teaching, Glushko is uniquely qualified to represent the balanced member base of the consortium. "As a Board director, I will work to keep OASIS focused on the need for its standards to be compatible with the requirements, values, and business models of the not-for-profit institutions in society."

OASIS is distinguished by its transparent governance, which is accountable and unrestricted. Officers of the OASIS Board of Directors are chosen by democratic election to serve two-year terms. Consortium leadership is based on individual merit and is not tied to financial contribution, corporate standing, or special appointment.

Other OASIS Board directors include John Borras of the UK Cabinet Office’s e-Government Unit, Edward Cobb of BEA Systems, Mike DeNicola of Fujitsu, Patrick Gannon of OASIS, Eduardo Gutentag of Sun Microsystems, Frederick Hirsch of Nokia, Christopher Kurt of Microsoft, Jeff Mischkinsky of Oracle, and Michael Weiner of IBM.

On behalf of the organization, Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, expressed appreciation to departing Board member, Colin Evans of Intel, for his service and guidance over the past four years.

Additional Information:

OASIS Board of Directors: http://www.oasis-open.org/who/bod.php

About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WSS, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Press contact:

Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

BOSTON, MA, USA; 2 MARCH 2005 — OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) version 2.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. XACML is used to represent and evaluate access control policies.

Dan Blum, Senior Vice President and Research Director of the Burton Group, noted, "Access control is a requirement of almost every application. XACML goes beyond simply denying or granting information access, it defines the mechanism for creating the rules and policy sets that enable meaningful authorization decisions."

To meet the needs of a wide range of users across many different environments, XACML 2.0 incorporates new profiles for Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and Privacy. XACML 2.0 profiles also provide integration and hierarchical resources for the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) OASIS Standard.

"XACML is designed to standardize the use of declarative policy to control access to resources, which can reduce costs while increasing security," said Hal Lockhart, co-chair of the OASIS XACML Technical Committee. "XACML 2.0 can be of particular interest to those deploying SAML, looking for a practical way to implement RBAC or protecting hierarchical resources, such as portions of XML documents."

Before becoming an OASIS Standard, XACML v2.0 first completed an extensive public review and was approved by the OASIS XACML Technical Committee. Then, the specification demonstrated its readiness through multiple implementations, after which XACML was reviewed and approved by the OASIS membership as a whole.

"The approval of XACML 2.0 as an OASIS Standard builds on a solid base of XACML implementations by major international companies, start-ups, and open source providers," noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "Increasingly, XACML is being recognized as an integral part of enterprise security frameworks. Our congratulations go to the members of the OASIS XACML Technical Committee for their hard work in advancing this standard."

XACML is part of the growing portfolio of OASIS Standards for security, which also includes the Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL), SAML, Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML), WS-Security, and XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF). OASIS members also advance specifications such as Digital Signature Services (DSS) and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

XACML v2.0 was developed by members of the OASIS XACML Technical Committee, which includes representatives of BEA Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Computer Associates, Entrust, Gluecode Software, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and others. Participation remains open to all, and suppliers, end-users and system integrators are invited to join OASIS to advance the continued development and the adoption of XACML. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the xacml-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Industry Support for XACML OASIS Standard

BEA Systems "BEA realizes the importance of a portable description for security policy and the significant benefit it can bring to customers. As a result, BEA supports the release of the XACML 2.0 specification as an OASIS standard and is working to incorporate support for the standard in future releases of BEA’s product family," said Paul Patrick, Chief Security Architect, BEA Systems.

Cordance "By taking the industry standard for policy-based access control to a new level, XACML 2.0 provides even more incentive for enterprises to adopt XML-based resource management infrastructure. The OASIS XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) and XDI (XRI Data Interchange) Technical Committees look forward to providing other key pieces of this infrastructure that will leverage the power of XACML 2.0," said Drummond Reed, CTO of Cordance Corporation and co-chair, OASIS XRI and XDI Technical Committees.

DataPower "XACML finally enables organizations to move access control policy out of custom spaghetti code and into an interoperable, declarative XML form," said Eugene Kuznetsov, CTO, founder and chairman of DataPower. "Whether driven by new security threats, regulatory mandates or Web services, there is a growing need for fine-grained authorization for heterogeneous systems."

Gluecode Software "We are pleased to contribute to the advancement of the XACML 2.0 standard," said Bill Parducci, security architect for Gluecode Software. "As an open source infrastructure company, participation in these standardization efforts allows us to deliver leading-edge solutions to our customers. We look forward to incorporating XACML 2.0 in our products to facilitate integration with an enterprise’s central security policies."

Nokia "Nokia applauds the accomplishment of the OASIS XACML Technical Committee in producing the XACML v2.0 open standard," said Frederick Hirsch, Senior Architect at Nokia. "Having an open and standard means of expressing and resolving authorization and entitlement policies will aid in building secure systems. Nokia is working to use such open standards to enhance the capabilities of its mobile platforms."

Sun Microsystems "XACML is an important piece of technology for enabling access control for web services and part of the broader solution in providing a policy and security framework for web services," said Ed Julson, director of engineering for Web Technologies & Standards at Sun Microsystems. "Sun’s active participation in the development of OASIS XACML 2.0 and our open source implementation of XACML are further evidence of our commitment to open standards and the interoperability benefits they bring to customers."

Additional Information:

OASIS XACML Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/xacml

Cover Pages Technology Report: http://xml.coverpages.org/xacml.html

About OASIS: OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 4,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WSS, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

Press contact:

Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209