The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing "
open
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (YF ...
, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has over 840 member organizations and provides a number of services, including strategy, management, innovation and research, standards, certification, and test development. It was established in 1996 when
X/Open X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of info ...
merged with the
Open Software Foundation
The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was a not-for-profit industry consortium for creating an open standard for an implementation of the operating system Unix. It was formed in 1988 and merged with X/Open in 1996, to become The Open Group.
Despite ...
.
The Open Group is the certifying body for the
UNIX
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...
POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interf ...
standards. The Open Group also develops and manages the
TOGAF
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is the most used framework for enterprise architecture as of 2020 that provides an approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information technology architecture. TOG ...
® standard, which is an industry standard
enterprise architecture framework
An enterprise architecture framework (EA framework) defines how to create and use an enterprise architecture. An architecture framework provides principles and practices for creating and using the architecture description of a system. It struct ...
.
Members
The over 840 members include a range of technology vendors and buyers as well as government agencies, including, for example,
Capgemini
Capgemini SE is a multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company, headquartered in Paris, France.
History
Capgemini was founded by Serge Kampf in 1967 as an enterprise management and data processing company. The compa ...
,
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
Huawei
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...
,
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
, the
U.S. Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...
, and
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
. There is no obligation on product developers or vendors to adopt the standards developed by the association.
Platinum members:
#
DXC Technology
DXC Technology is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia.
History
DXC Technology was founded on April 3, 2017 when the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) ...
, USA
#
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
, Japan
#
HCL Technologies
HCLTech (formerly Hindustan Computers Limited or HCL Technologies) is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Noida.It emerged as an independent company in 1991 when HCL entered into ...
, India
#
Huawei
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
, USA
#
Micro Focus
Micro Focus International plc is a British multinational software and information technology business based in Newbury, Berkshire, England. The firm provides software and consultancy. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is ...
, UK
#
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
, Netherlands
History
By the early 1990s, the major UNIX system vendors had begun to realize that the standards rivalries (often called the "
Unix wars
The Unix wars were struggles between vendors to set a standard for the Unix operating system in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Origins
Although AT&T Corporation created Unix, by the 1980s, the University of California, Berkeley Computer Syste ...
") were causing all participants more harm than good, leaving the UNIX industry open to emerging competition from
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
. The COSE initiative in 1993 can be considered to be the first unification step, and the merger of the
Open Software Foundation
The Open Software Foundation (OSF) was a not-for-profit industry consortium for creating an open standard for an implementation of the operating system Unix. It was formed in 1988 and merged with X/Open in 1996, to become The Open Group.
Despite ...
(OSF) and
X/Open X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of info ...
in 1996 as the ultimate step, in the end of those skirmishes. OSF had previously merged with UNIX International in 1994, meaning that the new entity effectively represented all elements of the Unix community of the time.
In January 1997, the responsibility for the
X Window System
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...
was transferred to The Open Group from the defunct
X Consortium
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...
. In 1999, X.Org was formed to manage the X Window System, with management services provided by The Open Group. The X.Org members made a number of releases up to and including X11R6.8 while The Open Group provided management services. In 2004, X.Org and The Open Group worked together to establish the newly formed
X.Org Foundation
The X.Org Foundation is a non-profit corporation chartered to research, develop, support, organize, administrate, standardize, promote, and defend a free and open accelerated graphics stack. This includes, but is not limited to, the following p ...
which then took control of the x.org domain name, and the stewardship of the X Window System. (See history of the X Window System.)
Programs
Certification
Key services of The Open Group are certification programs, including certification for products and best practices:
POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interf ...
,
UNIX
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
, and O-TTPS.
The Open Group offers certifications for technology professionals. In addition to
TOGAF
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is the most used framework for enterprise architecture as of 2020 that provides an approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information technology architecture. TOG ...
® certification which covers tools, services and people certification, The Open Group also administers the following experience-based Professional Certifications: Certified Architect (Open CA), Certification Program Accreditation, Certified Data Scientist (Open CDS), Certified Technical Specialist (Open CTS), and Certified Trusted Technology Practitioner (Open CTTP). The Open Group also offers certification for
ArchiMate
ArchiMate ( ; originally from Architecture-Animate) is an open and independent enterprise architecture modeling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture within and across business domains standards of The Open Group.
Member Forums and Consortia
The Open Group provides a platform for its members to discuss their requirements, and work jointly on development and adoption of industry standards, to facilitate enterprise integration. (Note: Some of The Open Group documents are only available to members, especially when they are under development.) Based on their area of interest, members can join one or more semi-autonomous forums, which include:
*
ArchiMate
ArchiMate ( ; originally from Architecture-Animate) is an open and independent enterprise architecture modeling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture within and across business domainsArchitecture Forum
Digital Practitioner Work Group
Jericho Forum The Jericho Forum was an international group working to define and promote de-perimeterisation. It was initiated by David Lacey from the Royal Mail, and grew out of a loose affiliation of interested corporate CISOs (Chief Information Security Offic ...
- merged wit Security Forum in 2014
Open Platform 3.0 Forum - 'sunset' in 2019 Open Footprint™ Forum
*Open Process Automation™ Forum (OPAF) OSDU™ Forum
Real Time and Embedded Systems Forum
Security Forum
Open Trusted Technology Forum
* Universal Data Element Framework Forum - merged with Open Platform 3.0 in 2015; now known as O-DEF™ (Open Data Element Framework)
*Future Airborne Capability Environment™ (FACE)
*Sensor Open Systems Architecture™ (SOSA)
Members come together at The Open Group quarterly, regionals, and industry events, and member meetings.
Collaboration Services
The Open Group also provides a range of services, from initial setup and ongoing operational support to collaboration, standards and best practices development, and assistance with market impact activities. They assist organizations with setting business objectives, strategy and procurement, and also provide certification and test development. This includes services to the government agencies, suppliers, and companies or organizations set up by governments.
ArchiMate
ArchiMate ( ; originally from Architecture-Animate) is an open and independent enterprise architecture modeling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture within and across business domainsArchiMate
ArchiMate ( ; originally from Architecture-Animate) is an open and independent enterprise architecture modeling language to support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture within and across business domainsOpen Trusted Technology Provider Standard
The Open Trusted Technology Provider Standard (O-TTPS) (''Mitigating Maliciously Tainted and Counterfeit Products'') is a standard of The Open Group that has also been approved for publication as an Information Technology standard by the Internatio ...
™ (O-TTPS)
*The
Call Level Interface
The Call Level Interface (CLI) is an application programming interface (API) and software standard to embed Structured Query Language ( SQL) code in a host program as defined in a joint standard by the International Organization for Standardizatio ...
(the basis for
ODBC
In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...
)
*The
Common Desktop Environment
The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the UNIX 98 Workstation Product Standard, and was for a long time the Unix desktop associated with commercia ...
Distributed Computing Environment
In computing, the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) software system was developed in the early 1990s from the work of the Open Software Foundation (OSF), a consortium (founded in 1988) that included Apollo Computer (part of Hewlett-Packard fr ...
Future Airborne Capability Environment The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE Consortium) was formed in 2010 to define an open avionics environment for all military airborne platform types. Today, it is a real-time software-focused professional group made up of indus ...
(FACE) Technical standard
*The Motif GUI widget toolkit (used in CDE) The O-PAS™ Technical Standard *The Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM)
*The
Open Information Security Maturity Model The Open Group Information Security Management Maturity Model (O-ISM3) is a maturity model for managing information security. It aims to ensure that security processes in any organization are implemented so as to operate at a level consistent with t ...
(O-ISM3)
*The Single UNIX Specification (SUS)
*The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Source Book
*
TOGAF
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is the most used framework for enterprise architecture as of 2020 that provides an approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information technology architecture. TOG ...
® (Enterprise Architecture Framework)
*The
Application Response Measurement
Application Response Measurement (ARM) is an open standard published by the Open Group for monitoring and diagnosing performance bottlenecks within complex enterprise applications that use loosely-coupled designs or service-oriented architectures ...
(ARM) standard
*The
Common Manageability Programming Interface
The Common Manageability Programming Interface (CMPI, also called ''Common Management Programming Interface'') is an open standard that defines a programming interface between a WBEM server and WBEM providers.
Overview
The CMPI standard is defin ...
Joint Inter-Domain Management
Joint Inter-Domain Management (JIDM) task force, jointly sponsored by X/Open and the Network Management Forum, has defined a mapping between SNMP, CMIP and CORBA. The JIDM specification was adopted as a standard by the Open Group in 2000.
The ma ...