The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) is a trade association. The OSA works with ISVs, system integrators, and the broader

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

community to improve interoperability among

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

products by publishing

best practice A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to other known alternatives because it often produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing ...

s, promoting

technical standard A technical standard is an established norm or requirement for a repeatable technical task which is applied to a common and repeated use of rules, conditions, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and production methods, ...

s, and making tools and

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

s available.

History

In early November 2006, a group of

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

developer Developer may refer to: Computers *Software developer, a person or organization who develop programs/applications *Video game developer, a person or business involved in video game development, the process of designing and creating games *Web deve ...

s got together to form an alliance dedicated to improving interoperability and awareness of their products. Open source development had proven itself at the operating system and middleware layers but had yet to make a significant impact at the application level. Founders identified three important areas where collective action could be successful in lowering barriers to adoption of open solutions by business users: * Define and promote guidelines and best practices for interoperability between applications. * Foster a multivendor metacommunity of users, developers, and systems integrators. * Drive awareness and advocacy All of those present agreed that none of these challenges could be readily addressed by any one vendor in isolation. Issues of awareness, interoperability and community are inherently collective in nature, such that collective action is needed to address them. This led to the decision to create a

trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific Industry (economics), industry. An industry tra ...

. The result was the OSA. In December 2006, The Open Solutions Alliance was incorporated as a 501c6 in the State of California, and the initial founding members officially joined during January 2007.

Members

Notable members of OSA include Palamida,

CSC CSC, Csc or CSc may refer to: Awards * Conspicuous Service Cross (disambiguation) ** Conspicuous Service Cross (Australia) ** Conspicuous Service Cross (New York) ** Conspicuous Service Cross (United Kingdom) Science and industry * Cancer ...

, Concursive Corporation, Essentia Corporation,

Ingres Corporation Actian is a computer software company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California that provides data management software. In July 2018, Actian was acquired by HCL Technologies and Sumeru Equity Partners for $330 million. On December 31, 2021, HCL Tech ...

IONA Iona (; gd, Ì Chaluim Chille (IPA: �iːˈxaɫ̪ɯimˈçiʎə, sometimes simply ''Ì''; sco, Iona) is a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the Ross of Mull on the western coast of Scotland. It is mainly known for Iona Abbey, though there ...

Jaspersoft JasperReports is an open source Java reporting tool that can write to a variety of targets, such as: screen, a printer, into PDF, HTML, Microsoft Excel, RTF, ODT, comma-separated values (CSV) or XML files. It can be used in Java-enabled applica ...

Openbravo Openbravo is a Spanish Cloud computing, cloud-based software provider specializing in retail and restaurants; formerly known as a horizontal open-source ERP software vendor for different industries. The head office of Openbravo is located in Pam ...

SourceForge.net SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

, and

Unisys Unisys Corporation is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. It provides digital workplace solutions, cloud, applications, and infrastructure solutions, e ...

References

External links

{{Portal, Free and open-source software Free and open-source software organizations Technology consortia