The Open Group says the first technologies and specifications designed for use by companies and organizations that utilize its IT DialTone guidelines for procuring and implementing internet and web services within their IT infrastructures should be approved by April. In the year or more since Open Group first mooted IT DialTone as its new raison d’etre it has been compiling a list of functions which IT DialTone will embrace. A diagram of TOGAF, or The Open Group Architectural Framework, which the list embodies, will be posted on its web site shortly. The list, which was endorsed by a meeting of TOG members in Amsterdam last month, is overseen by an architectural board comprising users, vendors and other organisations. The list includes functions such as OLTP, security, systems management, object technology and network computing. And in a break from tradition TOG says IT DialTone will also utilize technologies and specifications defined by other trade bodies including The Object Management Group, IETF and W3C. TOG – which describes itself as the United Nations of IT – hopes users will deploy products and services which conform to IT DialTone, claiming they offer guaranteed interoperability with each other and with legacy, or what it likes to term heritage technologies. TOG to attract new fee-paying members who want to either deploy or develop IT DialTone-compliant products and services. TOG says it’s currently auditing all of its in-house specifications and technologies – including Unix branding, NC reference profile, CDSA security, DCE, other middleware and Java – to see which meet IT DialTone’s criteria. Meantime, a finance VP that CEO Joseph de Feo brought over from his previous employer, Barclays Bank Plc, is said to be reigning in operational costs. His goal for IT DialTone is to establish a good business plan with real funding. The kind of economics missing from TOG’s previous incarnations, it admits: in the past we haven’t delivered to users, it says, referring to the Open Software Foundation work. Its RFP process, dubbed PST Pre- Structured Technology agreement is a dead thing, TOG says. It doesn’t currently have a replacement. The organisation declined to say what IT DialTone wil cost to develop or how much it has in its coffers but pointed to the $22m it raised from the last collection of membership dues.
