The 13 user organisations that got together at Uniforum in Dallas earlier this year to express their collective requirements for open systems, held a second meeting, hosted by the Corporation for Open Systems and Uniforum Canada, in Vancouver, British Columbia a couple of weeks ago. The organisations, which represent a collective buying power of over $100,000m, are looking for a definition of open systems that they can all use and on which they can standardise, and have instructed Uniforum UK to prepare the groundwork for it. They will also be sitting in on X/Open’s Xtra requirements process to see whether a similar programme could be used to define their collective technological needs. The organisations will also be tracking the various open systems profiles and templates that are being put together around the world, with the aim of developing some kind of model that they can all use. They’ll also build up a library of information on open systems to share. The next meeting takes place in London on November 5 – bonfire night: it’s being hosted by Uniforum UK and chaired by John Spackman, director of the European Telecommunications Information Services group.
