The Association Francaise de Normalisation, Afnor, announced last month that it has affixed its seal of approval for conformance to French and European X400 standards to products from Groupe Bull SA, E3X SA, a subsidiary of Groupe IBSI, and Syseca SA. The designation NF-TI, Norme Francaise, X400 on an X400 product indicates that it has passed tests for conformance to ENV 41 201 and EVN 41 202 standards from the Comite European de Normalisation and for the corresponding French standards Z71 201 and Z 71 202. Afnor announced certification of Bull’s Starmail, E3X’s UCOM.X400 and Syseca’s Messager 400. One of Bull’s new products, Open Team, is undergoing testing and Bull expects to have final approval in a few months. Conforming to X400 standards is not, however, enough, says Najah Naffah, director of Bull’s multimedia product line. It allows you to communicate, but in order to be able to read the contents of a message easily, it is necessary to adopt also document standards like Open Document Architecture. He added that Bull has invested millions of francs in this area. Systems integrator Systeca noted that it is now working to evolve its products to the X400 88 standard in order to guarantee its customers interoperability between systems.
