X/Open Co Ltd has just completed global user survey, which is to be the foundation for its World Congress on Open Systems, Xtra ’91 to be held on November 13 to 15, in Reston, Virginia and reports that returns from four continents show a consistent concern over what is being called the quality gap. The survey was conducted for X/Open by DMR Group Inc of Toronto. The quality gap is defined as the difference between the priority that computer users assign to a specific open systems product area and the quality ranking of specific products available in that area. The open system standards club has drawn up a Quality Gap chart to show examples of the largest gaps. The perception of the survey respondents was that nearly all products currently available in 22 different technology areas and based on vendor-independent standards were not satisfactory. The survey collects the opinions of nearly 400 companies, accounting for $100,000m of information technology spending, over half of which have already adopted a policy of using products and technologies based on vendor-independent standards. The Xtra Congress is intended to be the beginning of the process by which users are able to begin to close the quality gap – to issue their specific requirements to open systems vendors.
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