Standards News Portal

The Standards News Portal is updated on a daily basis to bring you the most important news about standards, how they are created, and how they affect your business and your life. The Standards News Portal also allows you to search and read all of the 4,771 articles that have been added to the Portal's database since its launch in February 2002, perhaps the largest archive of its type in existence. You can also sort the database by topic or date, by visiting the Portal Archive Page.

Quote of the Day:

I think the majority of the Federal Circuit got it wrong

Seattle patent attorney Adam Philipp criticizing the In re Bilski, which invalidated business method patents

It's a huge tax on the startup/technology ecosystem and it's hurting innovation

New York VC Fred Wilson, applauding the Bilski case and slamming software patents

Both as quoted in XConomy Seattle

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Latest News: From all Sources

Updated OGC Reference Model from the Open Geospatial Consortium

OpenGeospatial Consortium – November 20, 2008: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has announced the completion and availability of Version 2.0 of the "OGC Reference Model (ORM)."...The OGC Reference Model provides "a framework for the ongoing work of the OGC and a guide for those who seek to implement interoperable solutions and applications for geospatial services and data. The ORM focuses on relationships between the documents in the OGC Standards Baseline (SB), which consists of the approved OpenGIS Abstract and Implementation Standards (Interface, Encoding, Profile, Application Schema), and OGC Best Practice documents. The ORM provides insight into the current state of the work of the OGC and thus serves as a useful resource for defining architectures for specific applications....It is the result of extensive development by hundreds of OGC Member Organizations and tens of thousands of individuals who have contributed to the development of OGC standards since 1994. ...Full Story

Standards-Based Computing Capabilities for Distributed Geospatial Applications

Craig Lee and George Percivall
IEEE Computer – November 20, 2008: Some 80 to 90 percent of all information is geospatially related. Examples include oil and gas exploration, weather forecasting and tracking, aviation, satellite ground systems, environmental planning, disaster management, public administration (e-government), civic planning and engineering, and all manner of e-sciences. All such activities entail gathering significant amounts of data and other critical information that must be stored, accessed, and managed... The ability to access, integrate, analyze, and present geospatial data across a distributed computing environment using common tools has tremendous value. Indeed, with the growing connectedness of our world -- through data-collecting instruments, data centers, supercomputers, departmental machines, and personal devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and smart phones -- as a society we expect a wide range of information to be instantly accessible from anywhere... The Open Geospatial Consortium and the Open Grid Forum are collaborating to develop open standards that address the distributed computing needs of geospatial applications while accommodating the inevitability of diverse formats, schemas, and processing algorithms. ...Full Story

SOA Could Rebound as Recession-Busting Strategy

Pedro Pereira
eWEEK – November 19, 2008: Adoption of the hard-to-explain technology is down, but it's still possible to make a convincing business strategy case. Service Oriented Architecture. The term, typically abbreviated to SOA, is a mouthful. It turns out it's hard to explain as well, and as a result, making a case to customers for return on investment isn't exactly easy. Determining ROI, in fact, is the greatest challenge developers working on SOA implementations say they face, according to a recent survey by Evans Data, which polled 368 developers working with SOA and Web services in September and October. So great is the challenge, according to participants, that it tops identifying available Web services, testing and validation, and paying for the technology....With that in mind, it doesn't take much to understand why the adoption of SOA is in decline. ...Full Story

ISO Releases New Edition of Quality Management System Standard

ANSI.org – November 19, 2008: The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published a new edition of one of the world's most widely implemented standards: ISO 9001:2008, Quality management system – Requirements. ISO 9001 details requirements for a Quality Management System (QMS), which is a framework for an organization to control its processes in order to achieve objectives including customer satisfaction, regulatory compliance, and continual improvement. The International Standard is used by organizations in 175 countries....No additional requirements have been added to the standard; instead, revisions are focused on providing clarification to existing requirements. The changes also lead to improved consistency with ISO 14001:2004, Environmental management systems....According to the ISO/IAF implementation plan, one year after publication of ISO 9001:2008 all accredited certifications issued (new certifications or re-certifications) shall be to ISO 9001:2008. Twenty-four months after publication of ISO 9001:2008, any existing certification issued to ISO 9001:2000 shall no longer be valid. ...Full Story

Govern to Gain

Colin Cloete
PC Magazine – November 19, 2008: The financial crisis enveloping the world today has triggered a re-conceptualization of all forms of economic activity, from daily shopping to annual corporate budgeting. Businesses in particular are now struggling to balance profitability with product and service quality, focusing on optimising strategic business enablers such as IT to ensure that customer commitments are met while realizing an acceptable bottomline. For IT managers, this can be a daunting task. Being competitive in their field means adopting and maintaining the latest technologies, tools and techniques, but doing so often equates to considerable expenses. So the critical question these professionals ask, is how do they streamline budgets while providing the service quality required by the business? The answer is via IT Governance....There are several international frameworks and standards available to actualise this concept. One is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, which is a set of best practice service management processes that can be used as a reference on how to implement service management. Another framework is Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (CobiT),...There are two other standards jointly promoted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)....Given today's increasing corporate emphasis on reduced costs, resource-intensive IT departments are natural targets for cost cutting. IT Governance allows IT Managers to maintain the same levels of service while complying with organizational streamlining initiatives.... ...Full Story

OASIS Forms SOA for Telecom (SOA-Tel) Technical Committee

OASIS.org – November 19, 2008: OASIS announced that members have created a new "OASIS SOA for Telecom (SOA-TEL) Technical Committee." Abbie Barbir (Nortel) is Convenor of the TC, which holds its first meeting as a face-to-face meeting January 13-15, 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The TC operates under the OASIS RAND IPR Mode. This TC plans to identify gaps in standards coverage for using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) techniques in a telecom environment; particularly for Telecom operators/providers. The combined term "provider/operator" means a company that utilizes a telecoms network to provide service to the subscriber community, and they may or may not own the network assets or services they are providing. ...Full Story

JTC1 SC 34 Presentation to the JTC 1 Plenary in Nara, Japan

Dr. Sam Oh
SC 34 Informational FYI Document – Novemer 18, 2008: Excerpt from Document N1115, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Document Description and Processing Languages, apropos of ODF/IS 26300 spec maintenance: "JTC1 recognizes the timely response (N9398) from OASIS to the SC34 liaison statement (SC34 N1095), and thanks OASIS for the new draft errata to ODF 1.0. JTC1 particularly welcomes OASIS's proposal to confer with JTC1 and SC34 to forge a genuine partnership for collaboratively handling the maintenance of ODF/IS 26300. JTC1 requests SC34 and OASIS to develop a document specifying the detailed operation of joint maintenance procedures, with a common goal of preparation of technically-equivalent documents, and taking into account the requirements and constraints of both standards bodies. SC34 is requested to consider this document at its March 2009 plenary and report the results to JTC1 following this meeting." ...Full Story

OASIS Forms Technical Committee to Advance CMIS as an Open Standard

OASIS.org – November 18, 2008: OASIS has formed a new group to standardize a Web services interface specification that will enable greater interoperability of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. The new OASIS Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Technical Committee will advance an open standard that uses Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable information to be shared across Internet protocols in vendor-neutral formats, among document systems, publishers and repositories, within and between companies. ...Full Story

Computers Of The World, Unite!

Robert S. Sutor
Forbes.com – November 17, 2008: There I was, testifying before a phalanx of lawmakers about infrastructure. But they weren't asking me about bridges and tunnels. They were quizzing me about a different kind of undergirding: the electronic variety. They wanted to know how society can guarantee the compatibility of computers--and the electronic information they contain--across time, continents, companies and countries. For the first time in memory, technology standards have become a discussion topic at legislative hearings, on the U.S. presidential campaign trail and at E.U. regulatory meetings. Why the scrutiny?...Today, leaders are realizing that computers are not just consumer playthings, and that electronic information is the lifeblood of modern, enlightened society. With the same good governance practices used for legislative efforts, we must work together, industrialized nation and emerging economy alike, to develop and standardize technology to ensure our collective safety, liberty and prosperity. ...Full Story

Asserting the Worth of International Standardisation

Alex Brown
Where is there an end of it? – November 14, 2008: This is the first of ten pieces which follow on from the initial overview of this subject. International standardisation has a problem: many people outside the process (and even a few inside it) do not understand, at a basic level, what it is. Defining "standardisation" is easy enough – standardisation is essentially just agreeing on a specification; the far trickier concept is "international"....It is a respect for this international essence which will guide much of what follows in these pieces. It accounts for the complexity of the process, and it explains its value. The international aspect is, I argue, the guiding principle on which the mechanisms of JTC 1 should be built, and by which the activities of JTC 1 should be judged. ...Full Story

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Everything you need to know about Standards and why they matter