Cloud Computing as our Theme at last week's OAGi Meeting

Last week's meeting had our best attendance since this recession began.  Perhaps it was because we had keynotes from Microsoft and Oracle on their visions for Cloud Computing, as well as a presentation of OAGi's Cloud Computing initiative.

We also had a terrific case study that Cisco presented on their deployment of a web service that enables them to broaden the markets they serve as well as several other case studies and Council reports.

You can download the presentations for free on our website here.

OAGIS Enterprise Standards for Cloud Computing

The OAGi community started a cloud computing initiative a last month.   The community was concerned that cloud computing, like many new technologies, suffers from a lack of standards.

Where standards efforts are occurring, the focus is on technical standards, not data standards.  A well known technical expert, David Linthicum, recently wrote an article about the danger of creating silos in the cloud as we have with other technologies, unless we address the standards issue as a technology community.

The good news for data standards is that in a recent survey, 11% of respondents said they were already using OAGIS in the cloud!

In order to ensure that the OAGIS data standard fully enables our community to leverage cloud computing, we have initiated technical research.   Our early work has identified some changes to the OAGIS architecture that will improve the support for cloud computing and lay the groundwork for further evolution as cloud computing evolves.

Some of this work could appear in OAGIS as early as Release 9.5, which is scheduled for release in the spring of 2010.

We will be talking about this more at our upcoming Plenary session on December 1 in Redwood City, California, near San Francisco.  For more details on that meeting you can go here.  All are welcome to attend.

Terrific High Tech Council Meeting yesterday

We had a terrific High Tech Council call yesterday.  It was chaired by our Council Chair, Jean-Claude Monney of Microsoft.

The Council discussed their plans for a face to face meeting on December 2 near San Francisco.  That is the day after the OAGi Plenary session at the same location.

More information on that meeting can be found here.

Chemical Council Third Webinar a Success

The Chemical Industry Council held their third webinar in their planned series of three webinars yesterday, October 26.  Jim Wilson, the OAGi Chemical Industry Chief Architect described what is new in the Chem eStandards Relase 5.1.1.

The highlights included  a number of emerging agriculture-industry requirements for the following sectors: 

- European horticulture
- Feed
- Animal Health
- Seed 

Additionally, a new message was defined: Supply Forecast.

Jim also demonstrated a terrific new tool called the OAGi Chem eStandards Browser.  The browser enables any user to easily view the content of the standard, browse the Data Dictionary, see where context is used and generate Excel versions of the Schemas among other things.

This new OAGi Chem eStandards Browser is free to members only on the Chem eSTandards 5.1 download page here and will soon be available to non-members for a small fee.

You can learn more about the benefits of joining our community here.

New Export Compliance Working Group

I am pleased to announce that OAGi has a new Working Group sponsored by our High Tech Council.  

The scope of the Export Compliance Working Group includes Restricted Party Screening, License Determination, License Management and Checklist Screening integration.  The Project Definition is available on our website here. 

This Working Group is called the Export Compliance Working Group and is open to all OAGi members, regardless of your Council.  We welcome the cross industry participation.

If you are not a member of OAGi and would like to participate, I welcome you to learn about the benefits of joining our community by clicking here.

OAGi Chem eStandards Browser now Available

We are pleased to announce that OAGi has released an easy to use tool for browsing the Chem eStandards 5.1.1.  This browser enables the user to browse through the Chem eStandards without complicated technical tools.  There is a screen shot of the browser just below.

The browser is free to OAGi members and can be found on the OAGi website here.  You must be logged in and a member of OAGi.

For more information on becoming a member of OAGi, you can find information on our website here.

Thanks to all for your support.

Chem eStandards 5.1 Published

I am pleased to announce that a new version of the Chem eStandards is available for free download.

While we are working on OAGIS Release 10 to eventually supercede the Chem eStandards as a cross industry, Core Components 3.0 compliant standard, we pledged at the time of the CIDX merger to continue to maintain the Chem eStandards while the OAGIS 10 work progresses.

This updated version is called Chem eStandards Release 5.1.1 and addresses a number of emerging agriculture-industry requirements for the following sectors: 

- European horticulture
- Feed
- Animal Health
- Seed 

Additionally, a new message was defined: Supply Forecast.

The OAGi Chemical Industry Council is planning a webinar to review changes and demonstrate a tool that helps implementers to browse the standard in a business-friendly way.  Stay tuned for the announcement of the webinar date and times.

Chem eStandards 5.1.1 is backwards-compatible with version 5.0 and available for free download on the OAGi website here.  You must be logged in to download the standards.

October 2010 Newsletter Published

We just published our newsletter for October of 2010. Highlights include:

- We had 17,795 different visitors from 89 countries last month
- Our next face to face meeting is December 1 - 2 in Redwood City, California
- We just published Chem eStandards Release 5.1

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/27eoh98

Saudi Arabia Registration

I was pleased this morning to see that we added another country to be represented as a website registration.  Saudi Arabia marks country number 6 from the Middle East and brings our overall total to 76 countries.  

The breakdown by continent is just below.

Continent	Number of Countries Represented
Africa	7
Middle East	6
Asia	15
Australia/Oceana	3
Europe	29
North America	6
South America	10
Total Countries Represented	76

Uganda registration ups our country representation count to 75

We have a new country represented as a website registration. We welcome Uganda as country number 75 represented on our website!

Uganda is also country number 7 from Africa. It is always exciting to see the breadth of our community.

The breakdown by Continent is just below.

Continent	Number of Countries Represented
Africa	7
Middle East	5
Asia	15
Australia/Oceana	3
Europe	29
North America	6
South America	10
Total Countries Represented	75

Presented our UN/CEFACT Strategy to the MoU MG

We presented our Presented our UN/CEFACT engagement strategy to the MoU MG meeting yesterday.

The Memorandum of Understanding Management Group is an agreement of the worlds top International and Open Standards Groups. You can visit their home page here.

The objective of the MoU is to encourage interoperability by:

- Recognizing the risk of divergent or conflicting approaches to standardization
- Avoiding duplication of efforts and, therefore, confusion amongst users
- Ensuring intersectoral coherence

The Members of this organization include UN/EFACT, ISO, IEC, ITU, OAGi, OASIS, GS1, Swift, and others.  We presented that will adopt the following UN/CEFACT Technical Specifications:

- Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) Version 3.0
- Data Type Catalog Version 3.0
- Naming and Design Rules (NDR) Version 3.0

OAGI will also use the CCL to the extent that it meets the requirements of OAGIS Release 10.

OAGi December 1 Face to Face Meeting registration now open

I am pleased to announce that registration is now open for our upcoming meeting to be held Wednesday and Thursday, December 1 - 2, 2010, at Oracle's Conference Center in Redwood City, California.

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE

·         Using OAGIS in the Cloud

·         OAGIS Case Studies

·         OAGi Updates and briefings on Council activities

·         Updates on UN/CEFACT AND OAGIS Release 10

·         OAGIS Release 10 Working Group meeting on day two

You can download the most current agenda here.

REGISTER NOW - EVERYONE IS WELCOME

You can register for the meeting on our web site here.

OAGi Amsterdam meeting coming up November 1, 2010

Our European outreach meeting is coming up on November 1, 2010 and registration is now open.

We will be hosted by Cisco, an OAGi Board Member, on November 1, 2010 at their facilities in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Please feel tell anyone you think may be interested, everyone is invited.

You can learn more about the location of the meeting, hotel, get directions, and register for the meeting here.

UN/CEFACT Meetings this week in Geneva

The UN/CEFACT Forum is meeting in Geneva, Switzerland this week.  OAGi has several members participating this week, including two persons from Oracle and one person from SAP.

Jim Wilson, our Chemical Industry Council Architect, and I are participating in some of the meetings remotely.

Today it is the Context Methodology work, which is important to our OAGIS Release 10 strategy.

Converting to UN/CEFACT CCTS 3.0

We had a good meeting looking at automated ways to convert our OAGIS component libraries from CCTS 2.01 to the new UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) 3.0 format.

We are optimistic that we can do much of the work with home built tools using XSLT.  I will keep you informed as we make more progress.

For our upcoming OAGIS Release 10, we plan to support CCTS 3.0, Naming and Design Rules 3.0, and the Data Type library 3.0.  We also plan to leverage the Core Component Library (CCL) to the extent that it works for our requirements.

DHL Joins our High Tech Council

We are very pleased to have DHL join our High Tech Council. DHL has been active in open standards efforts for years, including holding leadership positions in RosettaNet.

The High Tech Council is preparing to roll out some excellent work to support logistics for the high tech industry, so the timing with DHL is excellent.

The members of the OAGi High Tech Council include: Cisco, DHL, GXS, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Their web page is here.

OAGi Website Registrations Growing

I checked our registered users yesterday afternoon and found that OAGi has added 2182 registered users from 74 countries to our website since December 2009 and we are growing at the rate of 6 to 10 new users a day.

It's fun to watch this community continue to grow and it is another reason why membership in OAGi is such a valuable thing.  It really brings you into a large community of people who are working to solve the same problems.

High Tech Council Meeting Today

The OAGi High Tech Council is meeting today.  I am very excited because this is the first meeting Chaired by our new Chair from Microsoft, Jean-Claude Monney.


Jean-Claude is the US Chief Industry Technology Strategist for the Microsoft High Tech and Automotive businesses.  He also has experience Chairing the RosettaNet Architecture and Electronic Component Boards.

European meeting registration now open

I am pleased to announce that registration for our upcoming European OAGi meeting is now open.

We will be hosted by Cisco, an OAGi Board Member, on November 1, 2010 at their facilities in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Please feel tell anyone you think may be interested, everyone is invited.

You can learn more about the location of the meeting, hotel, get directions, and register for the meeting here.

Successfully collaborating with ISA 95 Team

Our OAGIS X Working Group had a terrific joint meeting with the ISA 95 team this week.  We worked very closely with the ISA 95 team a few years ago when OAGi joined the Open O&M efforts.

The purpose was to discuss their new release of ISA 95 Part One with the intention of harmonizing the manufacturing concepts they have defined with the manufacturing concepts that OAGIS has defined.

The good news is their approach has been to make the base concepts more general, and then rely on a form of contextualization to add the detail to the concept.

That is exactly what we are working to do with our remodeling of OAGIS and building towards implementing the UN/CEFACT Context Methodology.

The two teams worked well together, and we pledged close cooperation moving forward.

OAGIS and ISA S95

As part of our OAGIS Release 10 (OAGIS X) work, the Working Group has been reviewing the terms for manufacturing concepts with the goal of harmonizing OAGIS and ISA S95.

One Working Group member has build a spreadsheet that we have reviewed, and now we plan to meet with some of the members of ISA S95 to discuss this further.

This is an important development in the harmonization of standards for manufacturing and we hope it will produce a better Open Standard for the community.

OAGIS on Schema Central

The Schema Central website has posted a nice expression of OAGIS Release 9.4.1 online on their website here.  The documentation is pretty nice as well. 

A word Release 9.4.1, we plan to be releasing OAGIS Release 9.5 within the next six months.  Release 9.5 will include a new Warranty set of BODs, support for High Tech Logistics business processes, as well as support for the Order to Cash and Procure to Pay business processes for the Metals Industry.

New Export Compliance Working Group

CDC Software, one of our Policy Board members, has proposed building a new Export Compliance BOD.

The proposed scope is to address Restricted Party Screening, License Determination and Checklist Compliance Screening Integration.

Stay tuned for the call for participation.

Software tools for OAGIS X

The OAGIS X team most recently started a study group to look at software tools they need to build for themselves to help build and deploy OAGIS X.

This includes library management, conversion of components to CCTS/NDR 3.0, and support for the UN/CEFACT Context Methodology.

We are planning to use open source and build scripts for ourselves.

OAGi News August 2010

The OAGi newsletter for August 2010 was published today.  The highlights include:

A new members only section of the OAGi website
Our OAGi Group on LinkedIn Group
New Export Compliance Working Group
OAGi Tools Strategy dicsussion for OAGIS Release 10.

You can read the entire August newsletter here.

Mozambique Registration

I was pleased to see that OAGi added a seventy fourth county to the registration list this week. Mozambique joins Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, and Egypt as our sixth African country represented.

It is always interesting to see the world wide representation of our community, and we welcome our newest nation.

OAGi Announces a new Members Only Website

We are pleased to announce that we have launched a new members only section of the OAGi website. We will be adding to it over time and we welcome your suggestions and feedback.

Some of the features include:
· An OAGi Calendar of events
· Free Software and guides that we charge for non-members
· Links to webinar recordings
· OAGi video training class
· Access to OAGi member logos
· Technical resources not available on the open website

OAGi members can just login with your userid and you will see the members area appear on the menu.

The OAGi website can be accessed at: http://www.oagi.org/

Visit our OAGi Linkedin Group

The Open Applications Group has a Linkedin Group that is growing.  There you can share with others of your same interests, including standards, interoperabilty, and B2B.


We invite you to visit us here. http://tinyurl.com/32ghe9d

Software tools for standards development

We had a good OAGIS X development meeting last Friday, discussing requirements for software tools to do a better job of building and maintaining our standards.

We don't want to spend money, and we have some really smart people involved, so I am thinking we build some tools for us, not commercial use.

We already have a BOD flattener that was a team effort with staff and members, and we are planning to use that model for this effort.

OAGIS Release X Progress Report

In August of 2009, we kicked off the official OAGIS X Working Group.  During the first year of this three year effort, we have made significant progress toward our eventual goal of completing the effort in approximately 3 years.

We are meeting remotely every Friday for three hours, and in addition the Manufacturing Sub-group has meeting meeting weekly for two hours.

The Manufacturing Sub-group will be winding down in the next few weeks, and we are planning the Financial Sub-Group to ramp up soon.

We have learned a great deal during this first year, and we look forward to putting that knowledge to work in the coming year.

If you are not a member of OAGi, and would like to join the OAGIS X Working Group, you can contact us at membership@oagi.org.

OAGi Registered as an UN Economic and Social Council Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)

OAGi has completed the registration process to become a registered NGO with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

OAGi has been contributing to the work of UN/CEFACT since 1999.   As UN/CEFACT is an intergovernmental body of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), which reports to ECOSOC, our acquisition of official status with ECOSOC should improve our members’ standing in its further work with UN/CEFACT.

Second Chemical Industry Council webinar is another success

The Chemical Industry Council held their second webinar is their three part series. The name of this webinar was "Implementing Standards in and Beyond the Chemical Industry: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

Our Council Chair, Tom Fannon, and long time CIDX contributor Nancy Fazzoni discussed their experiences on this topic.

Stay tuned for the announcement of the third webinar in the series.

European Chemical Industry Standards Opportunity

We have recently been approached by the European Council of the Chemical Industry (Cefic at http://www.cefic.org/) located in Brussels, Belgium.

A new EU legislation named REACH, is being implemented for manufacturers, importers and supply chain actors. One of the key objectives of REACH is the safe use of substances throughout the supply chain.

As a result of this legislation, an joint initiative including Industry Associations (Cefic, FECC, and DUCC), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA, which is equivalent to the USA Environmental Protection Agency, and several IT solution providers, has been started to develop a standard (XML) for exchange of the necessary related data throughout the Supply Chain.

They are asking OAGi if we would consider adopting the standard, including it in our portfolio, and take over governance of it.

We will be meeting with them over the next several months to discuss this further.  

Stay tuned for updates.  In the meantime, we are open to comments and feedback.

OAGIS Use Survey Preliminary Results

Since we launched our survey a week ago, we have received 77 responses so I thought I would release these preliminary results.

The even match with B2B and A2A is consistent with other surveys we have done. The use of OAGIS for SOA and Web Services seems to be consistent with questions we get about using OAGIS.

Even the Cloud number is good considering it is a new technology. OAGi is working to ensure that Cloud Technologies are also based on open standards.

How are you using OAGIS?	Number of Response(s)	Response Ratio
Business to Business	48	63.1%
Application to Application	55	72.3%
Business to Consumer	7	9.2%
In a Cloud	5	6.5%
For SOA Implementation	36	47.3%
To Implement Web Services	32	42.1%
For Master Data Management	20	26.3%
For Data Warehousing	3	3.9%

Chemical Industry webinar a big success

We held our first of three planned webinars on eBusiness in the Chemical Industry yesterday and it was a big success. The theme of the webinar series is, "Collaborate, Integrate, Participate".

The title of the webinar yesterday was, "EDI to Industry XML and Beyond".

We had 87 registered for the event and Tom Fannon, the Chair of the OAGi Chemical Industry Council was the featured speaker.

Watch this space for the announcement of the next in the series.

Up to 73 countries represented in registrations

Since our last post on this topic, we discovered two more countries registered. We are now up to 73.

The new breakdown is just below. It is always exciting to see the breadth of our community.

Continent	Number of Countries Represented
Africa	10
Asia	15
Australia/Oceana	3
Europe	29
North America	6
South America	10
Total Countries Represented	73

May Meeting Presentations now available

May 2010 Meeting a Success

Our May 2010 face to face meeting was a big success. Once again, our long-standing partner, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hosted us at their headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

The keynote was entitled "Interplay between models in engineering and business domains" and was delivered by the new Chief of Manufacturing Systems Integration Lab, Vijay Srinivasan.

We had reports from all of our Councils, and a special report from our newest Council, our Metals Industry Council.

The day was concluded by a tremendous panel entitled, "What is the most important issue facing e-Commerce today?" with representatives from the High Tech, Chemical, Metals, and Oil and Gas industries.

Thank you to all for making this meeting such a tremendous success. You can download the presentations on our website here.

71 Countries Registered on OAGi Website

I was going though our registered users again and thought it would be good to provide an update.

We continue to add 65 to 70 new registrations on our website each and every week and we are up to 71 countries represented. The most exotic country award goes to Tuvalu Island! We are also seeing more and more registrations from China.

Detailed breakout by country is just below. Thanks to all for your support.

Continent	Number of Countries Represented
Africa	5
Asia	19
Australia/Oceana	2
Europe	29
North America	6
South America	10
Total Countries Represented	71

TWENTY FOURTH MEETING OF THE ISO-IEC-ITU-UN/ECE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING MANAGEMENT GROUP

Today is the 24th meeting of a group that comes together twice a year to coordinate world wide standards setting efforts.

The group is comprised of the 4 de jure standards organizations as stated in the tile of this post, but also many standards development organizations (SDOs), including ourselves, SWIFT, OASIS, and GS1.

The meeting is in Geneva, and we are participating remotely. Our update will summarize our convergence efforts and our work with UN/CEFACT. You can find out more about this group here.

Sustainability Consortium

SAP invited us this week to participate in a press release concerning their involvement in the Sustainability Consortium that Walmart is starting.

They plan to introduce us to the leadership once they join and we plan to propose working with them.

You can find more information on them here.

OAGIS Training Online

There is a tremendous resource now available on the web that is a three part training class given by OAGIS members and staff.

This was done at an HR-XML meeting because they use OAGIS technoclogy to build their standard. The links to the training classes are just below.

BODs Part One:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3927068157001499461&hl=en&emb=1#

BODs Part Two - Mike Rowell, Oracle representative and Chief Architect:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8089897732946935762&ei=bewmS4PFM5Pc2gL-voi8DA&q=%22michael+rowell%22#

BODs Part Three - Steffen Fohn, ADP representative, and Vice Chair, Architecture Council:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8169863731629843618&hl=en&emb=1#

STEP Convergence is back

It looks like the STEP convergence efforts we started in 2008 - 2009 will be starting back up after a short break.

NIST is taking the lead and looking for funding to help with the effort.

I am excited about the possibilities. Right now it is in organizing mode, but it does look like one of our members, Boeing, is interested in participating.

I will update on this in future blogs.

OAGIS Case Studies posted

We posted 20 OAGIS Case Studies on our website recently. These come from members and users and contain some tremendous information and cover many aspects of both B2B and Enterprise Integration. The webpage is here.

These have been presented at our face to face meetings over the last few years. We have at least one new one coming up at our May, 2010 meeting as I well. I invite you to register for that meeting now. You can register here.

May 2010 Meeting Announcement

I am pleased to announce that registration has opened for our upcoming May 2010 meeting in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

This meeting will once again be hosted by our long standing partner, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

This year's meeting will be on Wednesday and Thursday, May 5 – 6. Wednesday will be the plenary session and Thursday will be Working Group meetings.

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE

Briefings from from each of our Councils:

- Architecture Council
- Chemical Industry Council
- High Tech Council
- Metals Industry Council
- Architecture Council

You can read the details and register for the meeting here.

We look forward to seeing you there!