The explosive proliferation of industry bodies continues and the latest brings together ICL Plc, Bell Atlantic Business Systems Services Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, Microsoft Corp and Sun Microsystems Computer Corp, and the ill they aim to alleviate is the lack of international standards for service and support information in distributed computing environments. To that end, they have formed the Distributed Support Information Standards Group and say the standards it will seek to establish will address the concerns of organisations reponsible for service, support and management of networked systems. The idea is that the standards should lead to increased uptime for users, and are also intended to aid computer and network operating system companies and hardware vendors that implement the standards, as well as those that use system management applications. The aim is that the open services standards should help service providers to deliver the same types of remote services cost-effectively for systems in a network as are available for centralised systems. The members, and several other participating companies, were brought together by Bell Atlantic Business Systems Services because it believes the lack of centrally available information on what is on heterogeneous networks, and where, is snagging the promise of networked computing. The Group will co-ordinate efforts with established consortia pursuing related projects and aims to hold an interoperability demonstration in the autumn; the group is operating out of Bell Atlantic’s Frazer, Pennsylvania base.
