Collaboration Services / Introduction
Thinking of forming a consortium? Let us help you. The Open Group knows how and can help you get through the start-up phase effectively and can provide support, guidance, proven processes and templates for each stage of your journey.
When forming and operating a consortium, there are numerous legal, business, IT, and staffing decisions to be made – all of which can have lasting ramifications down the road. The Open Group's Collaboration Services can help you throughout the lifecycle of your new consortium to help you deal with these quickly and effectively, and help focus your energies on solving your real business problems and helping your consortium in Making Standards Work™.
Forming a consortium?
Let us help you focus on the real work of your consortium sooner and not worry about all of those details. 
The Open Group has all of the resources, templates and experience to help you minimize the time it takes to establish your consortium, its strategy, business plan, charter, structure, systems, and processes, so that your consortium can get down to the real reason you got together in the first place. Unlike other service providers, The Open Group is a consortium of more than 25 years standing and applies its own tried and tested way of working, adapted to suit your unique situation.
We understand that consortia are made up of competitors working together with each other and perhaps even with their customers. The Open Group Way is based on fairness, neutrality, and open processes and governance to insure that no particular party has an unfair advantage. In fact, we make it so simple that we will provide you with the use of our web-based consortium management tool Plato, for free. How can you qualify?
Developing industry standards?
Apply our proven and deterministic processes to your projects to reduce the time to completion and enhance the quality of the deliverables. The Open Group has the technology, tools, processes and experienced staff to move your group along to consensus and to market the results. Unlike other service providers, The Open Group is a consortium of more than 25 years standing and applies its own tried and tested way of working, adapted to suit your unique situation. Our experience includes the development of specificationsand APIs, best practices, and skills standardization (ITAC, TOGAF)
Need help in making your standards impact the market?
Once a consortium has developed their standards and best practices, The Open Group can help facilitate market adoption of those standards and best practices so that technical interoperability and common practices between buyers and suppliers within your target market is achieved, resulting in reduced customization costs and increased operational efficency for all constituents.
- Customer Adoption One of the most effective ways to facilitate market adoption of standards is for customers to require, through their procurement process, that vendors’ products comply with the standards. The Open Group can assist this process by helping customers establish procurement best practices that require conformant technology in their RFPs.
- Implementation Tools and Workshops Another significant piece of market adoption is implementation. After standards have been approved, experience has shown that there is a significant need for additional training on implementation. The Open Group can work with the consortium to create workshops that educate vendors and customers on the best way to implement the standards and best practices, offering a way to reduce their training costs, decrease the time and resources spent on implementation, and reduce the risk of implementing the standards and practices incorrectly.
- Certification and Testing Certification provides assurance of conformance and shows vendors’ confidence in, and commitment to, their products and people. It gives buyers confidence that products conform to standards and specifications, and are interoperable, and that individuals have the expertise and experience required to get the job done. The conformance testing services offered by The Open Group cover the full life cycle of test suite implementation and usage - from the test planning stage to the continuing alignment of the test suite with an evolving specification.
The Open Group has been developing and operating certification programs for consortia for over 20 years. We have the expertise, tools, processes, and systems to help you make your standards work without starting from scratch.
Case Studies
- NASPL (North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries)
- SIF (Schools Interoperability Framework)
Contact
E-mail the Collaboration Services team
