Intellectual Property Law

Introducing Certified Open

Just a quick post to notify you of an emerging standard that could prove equally important for both IT purchasers and suppliers.

Certified Open is a new standard for software, designed to promote fair competition in the IT industry that I learned about at the Open Source Summit in November 2007. In particular, the standard aims to address "lock in", the problem that IT users face of being stuck with a particular IT system once implemented simply because that system is not compatible with the IT systems offered by competititors. Because of lock-in, a quick decision by a business to use a particular IT system can become very costly over time.

IT suppliers can have their software, hardware and services evaluated against the standard and, if successful, be certified as compliant with the standard. A 3-month free trial for suppliers ends on 31 January 2008.

If Certified Open becomes widely adopted, it promises to be really useful for IT purchasers, who will know which potential suppliers provide IT solutions that do not hinder their ability to choose other IT solutions in the future.

Link

Certified Open website

Full post as published by IMPACT on January 04, 2008 (boomark / email).