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You are here: The Open Group > CIOCertification - A Part of a Virtuous CircleI have written in the past about how we need to think about certified products strategically. Since then we have had an opportunity to meet with a lot of really smart people about certification. In the upcoming conference we will talk specifically about open standards and certification. I’ve also written about architecture and how important architecture is to successfully aligning Information Technology to the needs of the business. Today I’d like to put the two together and then provide a little more detail on what certification means. Let’s start by thinking about architecture in the civil engineering sense, which is using architecture in the world of building cities. Architecture isn’t the buildings; it is a tool that helps create the buildings. Architecture isn’t the infrastructure of a city; it is a tool that helped create the infrastructure. How does architecture help? Well it helps by guiding the construction of the buildings or infrastructure. It does so in a way that maintains the integrity of the city, that is meets the agreed requirements. And how does architecture help guide the construction - by providing decision-making guidance: not just helping decide on the materials that will be used, but rather describing the requirements that must be met by the materials. Architecture sets the requirements for strength of a beam, or transparency of a window through attributes… it does not say the beam must be steel or the window must be glass, but rather that the beam must bear a specific load, or that a window must allow for specific light to pass through. In the Information Technology world architecture has similar responsibilities: to set the requirements in order for the integrity of a system to be maintained. We understand speeds and feed well enough, but other qualities of a system are a bit more difficult for us to truly understand yet. One area which we are learning about is the intersection of the two qualities of flexibility and durability. These two qualities are becoming ever more important as Information Technology is being pushed to do more for less. And it is these two qualities that are demanding that we pay attention to specific attributes of the materials used in creating a system. One of the attributes that address flexibility and durability is “open.” Materials that are open have interfaces that allow flexibility on either side of the interface. So flexibility is a key driver for openness. In order to ensure durability over time, open interfaces must be maintained. To ensure that open interfaces are maintained over time we use conformance testing and certification. So you can see that in today’s Information Technology world, architecture is driving the need for certified components in order to address real world business requirements. Certified components help build more flexible and longer lasting solutions. But what do we actually mean by certification? In the session I mention above where we met to discuss certification, we learned a lot. We learned that customers, contractors, vendors, component suppliers, standards bodies, and certification bodies are all engaged, in one way or another, in certification. They are all a part of a value chain that results in solutions. We also learned that certification has the potential to provide many benefits to this value chain including:
We learned that a certificate is a mark of trust, such as “UL”. It implies some successful assessment against stated and specific criteria in many cases determined by conformance testing. Conformance testing is a commonly used and successful means for assessing and providing evidence of the correctness of the implementation of the criteria. The certificate is awarded by, or through, a certification process that is appropriately set up for the stated criteria and the state of the subject of certification. Certification results in certified components, people, or processes. Certification can be run internally, or by third parties called Certification Authorities. As a mark of trust, a certificate implies that if there is a failure in the component to meet the criteria, then there is an established recourse for action. Certification has its pros and cons, but a good certification program optimizes the pros and minimizes the cons. Attributes of a good certification program include:
A standards-based certification program lowers the cost and time
from a customer-specific approach, and has higher integrity than the
self-declaration approach.
In The Open Group we are all working on different areas of this circle, and sometimes we need to remind ourselves that it all really does fit together. Definitions:
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