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Both the SOA and the OSIMM are considered technical standards by the Open Group, but consist more of a set of operation guidance documents and a Best Practice series, respectively. In order to provide more comprehensive materials towards reaching their goal of connecting business and IT, the group seeks to facilitate better self-analysis with the OSIMM and direction for business dealings with deployment of the SOA (the SOA Governance Framework).

For example, the OSIMM contains a lengthy table with criteria and points from various enterprise levels such as application frontends or infrastructure and examples so that companies can assess themselves on the basis of this model and thus get a sense of what priorities they need to focus on. The 60 and 90 page documents respectively contain references to embed into existing landscapes and to directions and part specifications.

The SOA Governance Framework is firmly within the grasp of Open Group. IBM is heavily involved with both documents. The documents are available for non-binding personal use in PDF form, however registration (complete with the sharing of one’s telephone number and address) is required. Upon registration, the user receives an email with the link to download. Links to the registration page can be found on Open Group’s news piece.

The Open Group, holder of the trademark UNIX, has 6 offices worldwide and claims open standards and interoperability as goals, in addition to the integration of Open Source technology. Just half of the team hail from the US, one third come from Europe, and the rest from Asia and Africa. Members come from the usual suspects such as HP, IBM, Sun, but also the US department of defense and NASA.

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