Menlo Park, CA — (press release) — The Open Group today announced the launch of the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum. The Forum will leverage The Open Group's diverse membership to bring together leading vendors with corporate and government customers. This will advance standards development based on real product solutions. It will establish test tools for suppliers to use to establish confidence that their products conform, and an independent certification program that delivers guaranteed conformance to the buyer.

“The Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum has been formed to complement existing standards by packaging them into coherent sets, and developing test suites and a certification program to assure conformance” said Allen Brown, President and CEO of The Open Group. “This will be the first conformance guarantee ever offered to a real-time and embedded systems buyer.”

The Forum will work with industry groups as an impartial standards integrator to review existing specifications and requirements in order to avoid duplication and redundancy of effort. Liaisons have been established with IEEE Portable Applications Software Committee, the Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc., The Object Management Group, the Uniform Driver Interface Project, and the National Committee for Information Technology Standards Technical Committee for Real-time Standards (R1).

The Forum's proposed program of work includes:

• Testing and certification for real-time and embedded systems and applications, including performance measures/testing. The proposed scope includes POSIX profiles, Real-time Java, CORBA and Uniform Driver Interface.
  
• API specification; specifically methods to indicate application real-time requirements to implementations and to indicate to applications the real-time performance of implementation supplied components.
  
• Security for real-time and embedded systems, examining the intersection of security requirements with real-time and embedded systems.

The final program of work will be directed by the members of the Forum.

The Open Group's Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum is co-founded by IBM Corporation, Lineo Inc., The Mitre Corporation, MontaVista Inc., NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the US Department of Defense's Open Systems – Joint Task Force, and VenturCom Inc.

Further information about the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum can be found here.

About The Open Group

The Open Group, a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral consortium, is committed to delivering greater business efficiency by bringing together buyers and suppliers of information technology to lower the time, cost and risks associated with integrating new technology across the enterprise. The Open Group's mission is to offer all organizations concerned with open information infrastructures a forum where they can share knowledge, integrate open initiatives, and certify approved products and processes in a manner in which they continue to trust our impartiality.

Quotes from the Founders of the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum

Lineo Inc. — “On behalf of Lineo, I welcome the formation of The Open Group's Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum,” said Tim Bird, Lineo Inc.'s Chief Technology Officer. “The Open Group has earned a reputation for fostering cooperation among vendors and encouraging the development of high quality software which meets the needs of customers in the IT industry. Lineo looks forward to working within this forum to participate in the standardization of these exciting technology areas with Linux.”

MontaVista Inc. — “MontaVista, as a co-founder of the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum, supports The Open Group as an objective venue for key standardization efforts,” said Kevin Morgan, MontaVista VP of Engineering. “MontaVista, our customers, and our technology partners can use this forum to address the challenges faced in real-time and embedded development.”

NASA SEWP, Goddard Space Flight Center — “The NASA Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement (SEWP), located at NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center, has a long history of working with and utilizing The Open Group to promote and ensure the availability of open standards based computer systems to the NASA community” said Joanne Woytek, Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement Manager at NASA. “With NASA's requirements to support mission critical real-time applications, NASA SEWP is looking forward to participating with The Open Group's newly formed Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum to further promote existing real-time standards and assist in defining the future directions of those standards.”

VenturCom, Inc. — “We are proud to be a member of The Open Group. VenturCom is recognized as the premiere company with respect to offering licensing, training and extension technologies for Windows-based real-time systems. We see The Open Group as a key resource in identifying emerging market trends,” said Roy Kok, VenturCom's Vice President of Marketing. “VenturCom has developed a significant strategic consulting initiative which can be applied to a variety of vertical applications which The Open Group may identify for us.”

Related story:
New Real-time & Embedded Systems standards organization
Open Group Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum Meeting: Oct. 25-26

 
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