BOSTON, MA, USA; 26 OCTOBER 2005 – Members of the OASIS international standards consortium announced plans to define extensions to the WS-Security OASIS Standard that will enable the trusted exchange of multiple SOAP messages and will define security policies that govern the formats and tokens of those messages. The new OASIS Web Services Secure Exchange (WS-SX) Technical Committee brings together users and vendors in an open process to refine and finalize a set of specifications based on three initial contributions, WS-SecureConversation, WS-SecurityPolicy and WS-Trust. Other contributions and changes to these input documents will be accepted for consideration without prejudice or restriction and evaluated based on technical merit.

"In order to meet the growing demands of secure Web service messaging, we need facilities beyond what is provided in the WS-Security OASIS Standard," explained Kelvin Lawrence of IBM, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee. "WS-Security describes a base mechanism for securing SOAP messages. With WS-SX, we’ll concentrate on trust brokering, multi-message exchanges, and policies that describe how to secure message exchanges with a Web service."

With input from the entire community, the OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee will advance a set of modular specifications that standardize the concepts, WSDL documents, and XML Schema renderings for trusted brokering of SOAP message exchanges, shared security contexts, and security policies. WS-SecurityPolicy defines a general set of security policies that can be associated with a Web service. WS-Trust provides a description for managing, establishing and assessing trust relationships between parties exchanging information. WS-SecureConversation serves as a building block to create a secure context for organizations to exchange multiple messages without constantly reauthenticating.

"The WS-Security OASIS Standard describes how to use security tokens to obtain message integrity, confidentiality, and authentication of the message sender, but in order to use these mechanisms, tokens must be obtained and trust brokered. Furthermore, a mechanism is needed to describe security exchange patterns," noted Chris Kaler of Microsoft, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee. "WS-Trust and WS-SecurityPolicy include additional primitives to enable the obtaining of tokens and brokering of trust relationships as well as expressing supported security exchange patterns as policy expressions associated with SOAP endpoints."

By advancing the specifications within OASIS, WS-SX developers are able to work in close proximity to related projects also underway at the consortium, including the OASIS Web Services Reliable Exchange (WS-RX), Web Services Transaction (WS-TX), and Web Services Security Committees. Participants in the OASIS WS-SX Committee intend for their work to be readily composable with these other specifications.

"The WS-Security OASIS Standard was designed to be a highly extensible method," observed James Bryce Clark, director of standards development at OASIS. "WS-SX will provide further extensions to enable functions such as policy expressions and long-running conversations. These will augment the X.509, username, SAML, and other token profiles already available for WS-Security."

The OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee will operate under Royalty Free on RAND Terms, as defined by the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. The Committee’s first meeting will be held 7-8 December 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.

Support for WS-SX

Actional
"Ensuring that Web services can be used for mission critical solutions in the enterprise is vital," said Dan Foody, CTO of Actional. "Many mission critical applications require transactional integrity, and with the advent of WS-TX, these applications can be designed and built to use Web services — all while being interoperable across vendors."

Computer Associates
"CA is pleased to participate in the OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee. As one of the early contributors to the specifications that lead to the creation of this committee, CA recognizes the need for the standardization of trust between federated business partners and plans to implement those standards in CA’s IAM products as they become available," said Bill Bartow, senior vice president of eTrust Identity and Access Management at CA.

Forum Systems
"The OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee represents a significant step forward in creating a composable Web services architecture," said Mamoon Yunus, CTO of Forum Systems. "WS-SecureConversation, WS-SecurityPolicy, and WS-Trust help establish the necessary security context for exchanging multiple messages, resolving security token incompatibility, and defining interoperable security policy expression. With WS-SX, security underpinnings necessary for enterprise-class SOAs are closer to realization."

IBM
"We continue to see increasing demand for secure Web services from our clients deploying advanced SOA solutions," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president, IBM Software Standards. "The specifications contributed to the OASIS WS-SX Committee provide customers the ability to establish trust relationships that span long running exchange and provide interoperability for real world scenarios."

Microsoft
"Today’s announcement represents another significant step toward simplifying the development of secure, interoperable systems based on Web services," said Ari Bixhorn, Director of Web Services Strategy for Microsoft. "The broad industry support for this charter shows our continued commitment to providing a Web services architecture that enables customers to address their ever-changing business needs."

Nokia
"Nokia is pleased to see these specifications submitted to an open standards organization," said Frederick Hirsch, Senior Architect at Nokia. "We would like to see convergence of standardization in this area to enable the adoption of services that require these standards."

Novell
"Identity technology is a critical aspect of the Internet, and Novell is committed to providing secure interoperability within Web services infrastructure," said Kent Erickson, Novell vice president, Identity and Resource Management. "We recognize the security of Web services is important as we identity-enable the Internet. We look forward to collaborating with other leading software vendors so our customers can increase the security of their systems and improve their agility to meet their ever-changing needs."

Oracle
"Oracle is deeply committed to developing and supporting the development of open standards, and Web services security is a particularly keen interest to us," said Oracle Vice President, Identity Management, Roger Sullivan. "By participating in the OASIS WS-SX Committee we will play a key role in providing the standardized mechanisms organizations need to interoperate in a secure and trusted Web services environment."

SAP
"The WS-SX specifications will enhance Web services security through advanced support for collaborative business solutions," said Michael Bechauf, Vice President of SAP NetWeaver Industry Standards. "As one of the world’s leading provider of business software solutions, we believe that interoperability of policy-driven security runtime configurations and improved messaging security are important building blocks of the Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA)."

SOA Software
"The work performed by the OASIS WS-SX Committee will essentially complete the triumvirate of secure, reliable and transactional Web services required for real-world, business-to-business communication using SOA," said Alistair Farquharson, SOA Software CTO. "We are pleased to participate in this work as it will help to standardize much of the work we have already done through the creation of the XML VPN concept and products."

Systinet
"Security remains one of the top issues among enterprise IT executives adopting SOA," said Roman Stanek, Founder, Systinet. "This new standard will go a long way toward alleviating their concerns, and Systinet is pleased to support OASIS on this initiative."

TIBCO
"Missing from today’s Web services messaging is an accepted standard for brokering trust between parties in a SOAP message exchange," said Matt Quinn, vice president, Product Strategy, TIBCO Software, Inc. "In order to advance Web services adoption and enable the establishment of trusted relationships between senders and receivers, protocols around message integrity, confidentiality and authentication must be established. The OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee, comprised of the industry’s leading authorities on both IT security and open standards-based computing, will work to unite disparate efforts and achieve industry consensus to overcome this challenge." Quinn added, "As an active participant in OASIS, TIBCO is committed to furthering the development and adoption of standards that drive technology innovation."

webMethods
"While the WS-Security OASIS Standard provides an important protocol for securing SOAP messages, it fails to cover all of the important usages of SOAP today," said Marc Breissinger, vice president and Chief Architect, webMethods Inc. "The OASIS WS-SX Technical Committee is charged with addressing many of these issues, including trust brokering, multi-message exchanges, and the need for policies describing how to secure message exchanges with a Web service. Based on our continuing support for key industry standards and our long-term recognition of the need to derive business value from Web services, webMethods is proud to support this initiative."

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 5,000 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 WS-SX Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ws-sx

Cover Pages Technology Report on XML and Security: http://xml.coverpages.org/security.html

Press contact:

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

BOSTON, MA, USA; 12 OCTOBER 2005 – Members of the OASIS international standards consortium announced plans to define a set of protocols for coordinating the outcome of distributed application actions. The new OASIS Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) Technical Committee brings together users and vendors in an open process to refine and finalize a set of specifications based on three initial contributions, Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination), Atomic Transaction (WS-AtomicTransaction), and Business Activity Framework (WS-BusinessActivity). Other contributions and changes to these input documents will be accepted for consideration without prejudice or restriction and evaluated based on technical merit.

"The ability to conduct secure, reliable transactions using protocols rather than a dependence on shared technology is a powerful concept," said Lawrence Wilkes, Principal Analyst, CBDi. "WS-TX is the final piece of that jigsaw and with broad industry backing, it sets the direction that users are looking for."

"The interoperability of the contributed specifications has already been demonstrated by several vendors," noted Eric Newcomer of IONA, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee. "Our objective at OASIS will be to receive the broadest possible industry feedback and use that input to refine and build on what exists today."

The Committee plans to begin its work by focusing on the underlying specification, WS-Coordination. It will then proceed to advance WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-BusinessActivity.

"When you look at the industry today, a requirement to satisfy two common transaction patterns-atomic and compensating business activities-emerges," said Ian Robinson of IBM, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee. "By concentrating our initial efforts on WS-Coordination, we intend to distill the common features and provide a basis for extensibility, so that future transaction models can be supported as well."

"Our community’s understanding of the nature of transactional functions in a service-oriented system has improved considerably over the past few years," observed James Bryce Clark, director of standards development at OASIS. "This new committee provides a very clear set of components for those functions. We are delighted to see the work brought into open standardization, which will help make its usefulness and connections to other methods obvious."

The OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee will operate under Royalty Free on RAND Terms, as defined by the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. The Committee’s first meeting will be held on 16-17 November, 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.

Support for WS-TX

Actional
"The long term success of Web services and SOA is directly affected by their ability to be used for mission critical solutions in the enterprise," said Dan Foody, CTO of Actional. "Because many mission critical applications require transactional integrity, Actional is pleased to support WS-TX. WS-TX will enable these applications to be successfully built and deployed using web services without sacrificing multi-vendor interoperability."

Hitachi
"From its earliest days as a supplier of information technology, Hitachi has deployed demanding transactional systems to both private and public sectors. Since these early days, both Hitachi and technology have evolved together. The WS-TX specifications move that evolution one step further and prepare the industry for the next generation of transactional systems. We are grateful to be part of the team," said Takao Nakamura, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi.

Microsoft
"Microsoft is committed to working with the industry on developing Web services specifications that meet the needs of our customers and partners," said Ari Bixhorn, Director of Web Services Strategy for Microsoft. "The transaction specifications submitted to OASIS will enable customers to more effectively manage complex business tasks across disparate applications and incorporate transactional Web services into enterprise-critical systems."

Oracle
"Oracle is excited to be a key participant in the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee," said Vice President, Standards Strategy and Architecture at Oracle, Donald Deutsch. "As a long-time advocate of open standards, Oracle is committed to working within standards setting organizations to ensure that customers can leverage the large-scale benefits that Web services can provide."

SAP
"As a charter member of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee, we look forward to collaborating with other industry leaders to create a specification that will lead towards standardization of Web services consensus protocols," said Michael Bechauf, Vice President of Industry Standards, SAP. "This specification is critical to the Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) because it makes it easier for our customers to use services to compose innovative B2B solutions that run on SAP NetWeaver. In our capacity as a leading provider of integration solutions, we are well positioned to provide use cases that can be leveraged to help establish the applicability and the optimization potential of the WS-TX protocols."

SOA Software
"WS-TX represents the next major step for Web services and SOA," said Alistair Farquharson, CTO at SOA Software. "Adding the ability to support distributed transactions allows Web services and SOA to become a core part of the high-value value business transaction processing that makes up the bulk of most large enterprise systems. Essentially, WS-TX promotes SOA and Web services to the major leagues."

TIBCO
"As a leading Service-Oriented Architecture and Web services provider, our vision is to help customers implement SOA across heterogeneous IT resources," said Matt Quinn, vice president, product strategy, TIBCO Software. "Standards-based Web services transactions will provide enterprises with the transactional integrity and interoperability across diverse assets to help develop and manage mission critical applications. TIBCO currently provides transaction support with its TIBCO BusinessWorks technology, and as a member of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee, we will help drive the standardization of transaction technologies."

webMethods
"We are pleased to co-propose the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee and bring this important set of specifications to an open consortium," said Kristin Weller Muhlner, executive vice president, Product Development, webMethods. "The WS-Coordination, WS-AtomicTransaction, and WS-BusinessActivity specifications work is an important step forward in adding standards-based coordination and transaction management capabilities to Web services. This will enable the creation of next generation transactional Application Integration and Business Process Automation solutions in a services-oriented architecture."

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 5,000 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 WS-TX Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ws-tx

Cover Pages Technology Report on Messaging and Transaction Coordination: http://xml.coverpages.org/coordination.html

Press contact:

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

Bethesda, Maryland, USA; 14 September 2005 — Five organizations joined together for the first time to demonstrate interoperability of the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) OASIS Standard at the Enterprise Management World conference in Bethesda, Maryland today. Developed by the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee, the standard enables management applications to be built using Web services, allowing resources to be controlled by many managers, as well as giving managers access to more resources across and between enterprises.

"Web services and service oriented architectures are being adopted by companies who view technology as a competitive advantage to drive business revenues. Standards such as WSDM will further drive this opportunity and make it easier for IT professionals to integrate technologies and align with business objectives" stated Stephen Elliot, Research Manager Enterprise Systems Management, IDC.

Employing a weather station scenario, the WSDM OASIS InterOp demonstrated how management applications can go beyond centralized monitoring in an agent-based environment to achieve truly distributed, collaborative management in a world composed of both smart and simple resources. In the demonstration, the client depended on weather station services to send reports. By using WSDM, the manager was able to dynamically discover available weather stations, receive notification when a station was taken down for maintenance, and automatically redirect the client application to the next best weather station available, based entirely on a response time performance policy, without the client ever experiencing slowdowns or failures.

"This InterOp clearly illustrates WSDM’s ability to enable client applications to remain unaffected by changes in the status of services they invoke-all within a heterogeneous environment," said Heather Kreger of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee and participant in the InterOp. "WSDM can also be used to enrich business processes with management information and action, and to manage across organizational boundaries."

WSDM was developed by members of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee, which includes representatives of Actional, Amberpoint, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Novell, Oracle, SAP, SOA Software, 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.

Companies Collaborate on WSDM Interoperability

DataPower "Real-world Web services deployments in large organizations demand the ability to scale operational complexity in a cost-effective and reliable manner. DataPower’s SOA security, routing and service-assurance network devices are purposely designed to help our customers reduce that complexity, following our long-standing Integration for Management strategy," said Eugene Kuznetsov, Chairman and CTO at DataPower Technology Inc. "Ensuring interop-validated support for open standards like WSDM is a key factor for successful large-scale XML Web services deployments with the level of manageability, security, and performance required by our Global 1000 customers."

HP "HP is excited about the progress that this represents in the features that a standardized management protocol provides. In particular, WSDM provides management features that are critical for the management of SOAs."

Hitachi "Hitachi believes that the WSDM OASIS Standard is the most promising solution for taming the growing complexity of enterprise IT environments. The WSDM OASIS InterOp at this year’s EMW is an unprecedented opportunity for all of us to share a new vision of Web services-based management across the industry. We are confident that WSDM standardization and implementation will be beneficial for IT users and vendors alike," said Takao Nakamura, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi, Ltd.

IBM "Managing business systems in a cost effective fashion requires effectively dealing with the task of integrating multiple management technologies," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president of standards, IBM Software. "The WSDM InterOp shows how companies can come together to collaboratively leverage open standards to address the management challenges our customers face."

TIBCO "As a leading SOA and web services platform provider, our vision is to help customers leverage web services to improve operational performance management," said Matt Quinn, vice president, product strategy, TIBCO Software Inc. "With the acceptance of the WSDM OASIS Standard, our customers now have a bridge for IT and business managers to take advantage of web services for improved management and visibility. And we are now delivering on our vision with Enterprise Management Advisor, a commercially available software implementation of the WSDM standard that gives organizations a bi-directional view of the processes and technology investments that run their business."

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 Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsdm/

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

Enterprise Management World http://www.emwusa.com/index.html

Press contact:

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

London, England; 13 Sept 2005 – International standards consortium, OASIS, will host its annual European Adoption Forum in London, 17 October 2005. The event provides an opportunity for users, government agencies, researchers, and developers from around the world to explore what open standards mean for today’s e-government, e-health, and e-commerce communities. The OASIS Adoption Forum will examine how open standards relate to open source efforts and what benefits specifications such as the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) and the Election Markup Language (EML) offer users. Presentations from HM Revenue & Customs on standards and taxation, from the Netherlands Ministry of Finance on best practices for e-government, and from the Norwegian Insurance Administration on its ebXML-based national e-health infrastructure will also be featured.

Ovum senior analyst, Bola Rotibi, who will provide the keynote address for the event stated, "The terms ‘open standards’ and ‘open source’ are often misunderstood and misrepresented. Users need to look beyond ‘open’ and play an active role in ensuring that the standards being developed today meet their needs for interoperability. At the OASIS Adoption Forum, we’ll further a dialogue between users and developers on the common ground, as well as the divergence in the methods and goals behind each approach."

"It is critical for members of both the public and private sectors in Europe to stay abreast of the standards efforts that are shaping the marketplace," said event chair, John Borras, CEO of the United Kingdom’s Local e-Government Standards Body. "The OASIS Adoption Forum offers an ideal opportunity for those who may not be involved in the day-to-day development of standards to understand the trends, the status, and the actual business cases that drive this work."

The Forum will feature a panel addressing how standards organizations can coordinate efforts to promote real interoperability. Leaders from Europe’s most influential standards bodies including CEN/ISSS, GS1, ICTSB, and ITU will join OASIS CEO, Patrick Gannon, and panel moderator, Patrick Smith of Xenos, to discuss how their organizations are responding to user outcry for more cooperation in the standards development arena.

Attendance is open to all interested parties, and early bird discounts are available for those who register before 16 September. Meeting costs are offset by the support of OASIS Foundational Sponsors, BEA Systems, Innodata Isogen, SAP, and Sun Microsystems, and by event sponsors, HP, IBM, and Xenos.

OpenDocument and DITA Focus

The OASIS Adoption Forum will be followed by a special add-on event showcasing two newly approved OASIS Standards, OpenDocument and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). DITA builds content reuse into the authoring process for document creation and management. OpenDocument provides a royalty-free, XML-based file format that covers features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents.

"Massachusetts recently proposed a requirement for all state office documents and presentations to be output in a format that is compliant with the OpenDocument OASIS Standard, and many European governments are considering similar policies," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "In London, we’ll examine how companies and organizations can migrate to OpenDocument. We’ll also discuss the ways industry sectors, such as pharmaceutical, semiconductor, and telecommunications, can standardize on DITA subject-matter vocabularies within their communities."

Attendees of the OASIS Adoption Forum may participate in the OpenDocument and DITA Focus at no additional cost. Registration for the Focus alone, which will be held from 9:00 am until noon on Tuesday, 18 October, is also available. The OpenDocument and DITA Focus is sponsored by Sun Microsystems.

More information: http://www.oasis-open.org/events/adoption_forum_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, 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

Press contact:

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

Boston, MA, USA; 15 August 2005 – Members of the OASIS international standards consortium announced plans to develop concrete examples of business requirements for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementations. The new OASIS SOA Adoption Blueprints Technical Committee will define vendor-neutral "recipes," focusing on use cases and real world requirements that can be fulfilled by the deployment of services using SOA methods.

"There is a shortage of clear, demonstrable examples of working SOA implementations that teams can use to jumpstart new projects," said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC. "By defining an archetypal set of business requirements and functions that SOA best practices can address, the adoption blueprints will encourage the production of useful implementation examples and lower the risk of SOA initiatives overall."

Each adoption blueprint produced by the OASIS Committee will provide a business problem statement, a set of business requirements, and a normative set of functions to be fulfilled, all on a vendor- and specification-neutral basis. Early work being contributed to OASIS as part of this project described the needs of a fictitious enterprise, "Generico," which could be fulfilled by a variety of SOA approaches. Multiple vendor and service providers have already implemented this specification. The OASIS Committee expects that external parties will continue to use these blueprints as patterns for comparable implementation examples.

"SOA builders and end users will be primary participants, as well as beneficiaries, of this effort," said Miko Matsumura of Infravio, proposed chair of the OASIS SOA Adoption Blueprints Technical Committee. "Each blueprint will provide a community of SOA best practice as well as a clear way to evaluate technology suppliers." He emphasized that the new OASIS Committee remains open to all interested parties, and strongly encouraged SOA implementers, regardless of their size or geographic location, to become involved.

Members of the OASIS SOA Adoption Blueprints Technical Committee include representatives of Adobe Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, DataPower, Infravio, MW2 Consulting, Raining Data, Satyam, Software AG, and others. The Committee proposers also plan to work closely with and consider use of other relevant standards efforts, such as the SOA Reference Model also under development at OASIS.

"It’s very encouraging to see strong demand for clear guidance on practical methods used in service-oriented systems," said James Bryce Clark, OASIS director of standards development. "At OASIS, user-oriented projects such as this new Committee can work closely with functional standards to demonstrate how these technologies combine to solve real-world business problems."

Support for SOA Adoption Blueprints

Booz Allen Hamilton
"We believe that the work of the OASIS SOA Adoption Blueprints Committee will be instrumental in the creation of service-oriented systems for our clients through the availability of a valuable set of blueprints that can be applied consistently to the SOA implementation process," said Joseph Chiusano, Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. "These blueprints, when combined with the work of other OASIS committees such as the SOA Reference Model, are an evolutionary step along the path to an integrated set of techniques and methodologies for SOA. This is consistent with the future direction and guidance of the US federal government in regards to SOA and guidance from the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee (AIC)."

DataPower
"DataPower has experience with hundreds of SOAs, and we look forward to sharing these security and management reference architectures with the OASIS Blueprints activity," said Eugene Kuznetsov, chairman and CTO at DataPower. "Enterprise architects are clamoring for pragmatic, unbiased guidance to implementing SOAs, and OASIS is uniquely positioned to help. Now that key OASIS building standards such as WS-Security, WSDM, UDDI, and SAML are firmly established, it is time to show how they can be best used together–relying in part on production experience from DataPower and others."

Infravio
"Infravio is gratified to bring our real world SOA engagement experiences to the front line of SOA Adoption best practices at OASIS. SOA end-users we talk to really want hands-on yet vendor-neutral SOA examples," said Srinivas Balasubramanian, CEO, Infravio.

MW2 Consulting
"We are excited about the idea to collaborate and bring to the industry a best practice approach to implementing SOA. This will bring to the table a methodology to rapidly deliver and meet business requirements on any given SOA POC or project," said Michael Morris, CTO, MW2 Consulting.

Raining Data
"Raining Data, with its standards-based and enterprise-grade XML, XQuery, and SOA technologies would like to reiterate its long standing commitment to standards efforts by supporting this important initiative which will accelerate the adoption of SOA in industry," said Ash Parikh, director of development and technology, EAG, Raining Data. "Additionally, Raining Data would like to bring to the TC, our distributed data services and process management expertise, as well as real world domain knowledge in Supply Chain and RFID, Defense and Aviation, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, and Financial Services as the building blocks for developing best practices for SOA."

Satyam
"We are delighted to be part of this initiative, as the standards that come out of this SOA adoption blueprint shall directly influence SOA implementations around the world. The planned SOA adoption blueprint model will provide an integrated framework for SOA adoptions with potential to unlock hidden value in IT and help create new business value. Satyam looks forward to sharing these advances with its clients," said G.B.Prabhat, Director, Consulting & Enterprises Solution, Satyam.

Software AG
"Despite the volumes of information now available about SOA, customers still come to us regularly asking for practical ‘how to’ examples that will help them solve business problems using SOA principles," said Theo Beack, Chief SOA Architect for Software AG North America. "It is because we know that customers find such guidance so valuable that we have joined the OASIS SOA Adoption Blueprints Technical Committee. We strongly believe that implementers of SOA worldwide will benefit immensely from the results of this committee’s concerted efforts."

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 SOA Adoption Blueprints Technical Committee FAQ Cover Pages Technology Report on SOA

Press contact:

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

BOSTON, MA, USA; 8 August 2005 — OASIS, the international standards consortium, today announced that John Jackson of General Motors and Claus von Riegen of SAP were elected, and Eduardo Gutentag of Sun Microsystems, Chris Kurt of Microsoft, and Michael Winters of IBM were re-elected to the organization’s Board of Directors. Eduardo Gutentag was named chair of the OASIS Board, which also includes Edward Cobb of BEA Systems, Mike DeNicola of Fujitsu, Patrick Gannon of OASIS, Robert Glushko, Ph.D. of the University of California at Berkeley, Frederick Hirsch of Nokia, and Jeff Mischkinsky of Oracle. Representing the user, vendor, and academic communities, these directors provide the leadership needed to advance OASIS as an optimal environment for driving the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards worldwide.

According to Gutentag, the new Board reflects both the growing role of end users and the importance of geographic diversity in the standards development process. "There was a time when the task of working on OASIS standards was mainly left to vendors. Today, almost half the OASIS membership is comprised of users and policy setters that include major end-user companies, government agencies, industry associations, and open source developers. These organizations and individuals realize that they have something of great value both to give and gain at every stage of the standards life cycle. From articulating requirements, calling for convergence, developing specifications, ensuring interoperability, defining best practices, expanding OASIS’ international reach, and demanding adoption services as well as a clear Intellectual Property Rights Policy, users are participating in OASIS at greater levels than ever before–and the standards we’re creating are all the better for their contributions."

"Globalization is driving the need for open standards, convergence and interoperability across diverse industries," said John Jackson, Director Software Technology for General Motors Information Systems and Services Group. "The ability of OASIS to work globally across suppliers and corporations while managing the unique requirements of each is key to creating global open standards."

"As the need for software interoperability continues to grow, Web services standards become increasingly important, and OASIS holds a unique position in their development," said Claus von Riegen, Director Web Services Standards at SAP AG. "As a Board Director, I am committed to further improving the efficiency and quality of standards development at OASIS."

The Consortium also announced new members of the OASIS Technical Advisory Board (TAB), a group of industry experts who provide guidance on issues related to strategy, process, interoperability, and scope of OASIS technical work. Newly elected OASIS TAB representatives include Martin Chapman of Oracle and Hal Lockhart of BEA Systems. William Cox, Ph.D., and Pete Wenzel of SeeBeyond were re-elected to the TAB. Frederick Hirsch of Nokia was appointed the Board representative on the TAB.

On behalf of the membership, OASIS CEO and president, Patrick Gannon, expressed appreciation to departing Board chair, Jim Hughes of Hewlett-Packard for his outstanding leadership and contributions to the consortium. Gannon also thanked departing Director, John Borras of the UK’s Local e-Government Standards Body, and TAB members, Christopher Ferris of IBM and Timothy Moses of Entrust, for their service and guidance over the past two years.

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

Press contact

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

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