On November 5 1605, Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters attempted to blow the Houses of Parliament sky-high. That gunpowder plot failed. But the day before the UK Open Systems show hits town on Wednesday November 6 at London’s Olympia, at least 23 user organisations, representing all walks of life in the information technology business, meet in the capital, where they are expected to deliver an open systems rocket to manufacturers and suppliers. Previous meetings were held in Dallas and Vancouver earlier in the year, but the London gathering will likely send the strongest message yet to the industry, calling for the accelerated delivery of open system products and coalition between rival technology factions. The meeting is expected to formulate a common message on open systems which the organisations can take back to their respective markets and countries. The collective procurement clout of these groups runs into billions of dollars. John Spackman of the European Telecommunications Information Services unit is to chair the meeting – which is hosted by UniForum UK – and user bodies represented will include the User Alliance for Open Systems, the Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation, the Group of Ten, X/Open Co Ltd, the Sigma group from Japan, the European ISDN User Forum, the World Federation of MAP/TOP users, FUSO – a new forum for users of open systems in France, and Unix user groups from around the world.
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