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The X/Open Brand |
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The X/Open Brand |
An X/Open Brand on any product indicates that the supplier GUARANTEES to the customer, that the product conforms to published X/Open Standards.
Because the X/Open Brand is enforced by the Trade Mark Licence Agreement, customers of branded products can be assured that the product will always conform.
X/Open branding is the procedure by which a vendor certifies that its product complies with one or more of X/Open's vendor-independent product standards.
It is called branding because it is built around the right to use the X/Open Trade Mark, with trade mark law as its legal basis. Once a product is shown to comply with the specifications, the vendor is entitled to use the X/Open Trade Mark in relation to that product and its X/Open-compliant features. That right continues for as long as the product remains compliant and registered in the Directory of X/Open Branded Products.
In 1988, X/Open introduced a trade mark to act as a ready identifier for products that conform to the specifications published in the X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 2 (XPG2). In June 1990, X/Open launched the uniquely successful XPG3 branding programme. This was followed by the XPG4 branding programme in 1992, which vastly increased X/Open's coverage of brandable technology, and later by the hugely successful UNIX Brand.
The Open Group (resulting from the merge of X/Open and OSF), has now begun the launch of a range of Standards which are not at all dependent on any particular underlying operating system environment. One of the first of these, X/Open Security, is a prime example of such a range of platform-independent Standards.
Use of the X/Open trade marks is strictly controlled by a comprehensive licensing agreement which sets out clearly the criteria for compliance for all types of X/Open-conformant products and establishes stringent rules for the use of the trade mark.
The mission of The Open Group is to enable customer choice in the implementation of multi-vendor information systems
In doing so, one of the main tasks of The Open Group is to define common open Standards by helping major industry participants reach consensus. The results of this consensus-building procedure are exemplified by the publication of X/Open Security Standards. However, this is only one component in the efforts of the The Open Group to pursue its mission statement.
To bring practical value to users, The Open Group must by necessity do more than merely produce paper specifications. It must ensure that those specifications result in conformant products appearing in the market place. The Open Group achieves this through the creation of the X/Open brand and supporting branding procedure.
The procedure of branding systems that are conformant to X/Open Standards, is shown, in simplified form in the following diagram:
Branding Products to X/Open Standards (in
simplified form)
This branding procedure makes use of several important elements:
Each of these has a vital role to play in ensuring that products that claim to conform to X/Open Standards, actually do conform in practice, and continue to do so all the time they are being used in the commercial world to support everyday business operations.
These provide a highly detailed definition of what is required of a product in order to conform. Specifications are provided that cover a wide range of technolgies, and this coverage is increasing year by year. CAE (Common Application Environment) Specifications are normally developed by Open Group technical working groups, but can also result from an X/Open fast-track procedure, in which the specification originates from outside The Open Group. In these cases, the sponsoring organisation, acts as the editor of the specification as it passes through formal adoption procedures in order to be integrated into the X/Open CAE. The Open Group places various requirements on specifications that enter the fast-track procedure. These are intended to ensure that the new specification integrates cleanly with the rest of the CAE.
This is the second key element in X/Open branding and directly supports the CAE specification. Just as with the CAE specification, the Conformance Statement Questionaire, (CSQ), is a public document and effectively makes contractual obligations between vendors and procurers.
A CSQ is defined to accompany each and every CAE specification and is intended to describe how a product conforms to the specification. For example:
In addition, in the cases where it is impossible or economically infeasible to provide automated test suites, the CSQ can aid in establishing exactly how conformance to the specification is demonstrated.
A supplier of a branded product is required to make a complete CSQ available to prospective customers for examination prior to sale. Buyers of branded products are strongly recommended to obtain access to the X/Open CSQ as it contains valuable information regarding the product and the way in which it conforms to the X/Open Standards.
Test suites exist for many X/Open Standards, and successful completion of a formal test is a prerequisite for branding of these components.
Where The Open Group does not specify a test suite for a component, no indicator of compliance needs to be presented at the time of branding. However, the supplier is still required to warrant and represent that the product conforms to the applicable X/Open Standards and none of the supplier's obligations under the Trade Mark Licence Agreement are in any way reduced.
For a number of X/Open Component Standards, X/Open has itself developed conformance test suites which it has made available under licence through a network of distributors. In other cases, for instance in the programming language components where the X/Open Standards conform to international standards, references are made to the test suites that have been developed to support the existing formal certification schemes for these languages in the U.S.A. and Europe.
The requirements in the Trade Mark Licence Agreement regarding continuing conformance of a branded product state that a supplier is required to ensure that any changes to a product have no effect upon its conformance to the X/Open Standards. The implication of this is that the The Open Group specified conformance test tools become embedded within the normal quality assurance procedure of the supplier. Through this means the supplier is able to retain the brand and buyers are assured that branded products continue to conform.
In support of an application to brand a product, The Open Group requires among other things, a formal test report in respect of components for which a test tool is specified.
There are two sources of test reports that may be used for branding:
Recognised laboratories are required either to have been assessed directly by X/Open for the conformance of their procedures to ISO guide 25, or to have been accredited by a national or regional accreditation body for the conformance of their procedures to ISO guide 25.
ISO guide 25 is concerned with the repeatability and reproduceability of formal test procedures, and therefore provides The Open Group and the branding programme with a firm foundation of dependable test reports.
The alternative approach of non-recognised laboratories is dealt with by means of quality control rather than quality assurance. Branding applications through such laboratories are subject to a high percentage of random audit (the percentage varies between 80%-100% depending on the particular technology in question). This contrasts with the case of recognised laboratories which, in a low percentage of test reports, are subject to a technical audit (typically 5%).
A technical audit of the branded product is undertaken in a small percentage of cases, using the services of an independent third party test laboratory. Such an audit takes place in approximately 5% of branding applications, irrespective of the type of test laboratory that produced the original test report.
The audit rates quoted above are provisional and subject to review (up or down) in the light of our continuing experience of the branding programme. This procedure applies equally to The Open Group members and to non-members.
The Trade Mark Licencing Agreement (TMLA) is the primary governing document for branding, and provides the legal enforcement of the conditions of the X/Open Brand. Trade Mark Law provides the legal basis of this agreement. Under the conditions of the TMLA, a vendor warrants that its product does in practice conform to the specifications for which conformance is claimed. It requires specific evidence of conformance, such as test suites, where such test suites are available.
The TMLA imposes strict obligations on vendors for ensuring continuing product conformance, including:
A component is the smallest element of capability to which specific products may be separately branded under the X/Open Brand.
A Component corresponds to a coherent set of system or product capability, potentially broader than a single specification, which is implementable in a genuinely open manner by adherence to specific X/Open-referenced specifications. The particular specifications to be used are identified in an X/Open Component Definition. They may be X/Open specifications, other industry standards, or formal (de jure) standards.
Component Standards are the building blocks of The Open Group integrated open system definition. Over time, The Open Group is committed to defining more Component Standards, and to increasing the scope of the Component Standards already defined, to broaden the set of capability that is available in the open systems domain.
Secure Communications Services is an example of a Component Standard.
Certain Components may be combined together to support a specific functional need, such as a transaction processing system. Alternatively, it may be deemed that a single specification provides a complete solution for a particular customer problem space. In such cases, The Open Group publishes X/Open Profile Standards, and are meant to represent what the user actually needs to buy in practice. Baseline Security 96 is an example of such a Profile Standard.
There may be additional conformance requirements over and above those required by components or individual specifications. If so, these are stated in the profile definition. However, in general, if a product or group of products conforms to each of the relevant component definitions, and also works together as a whole to allow applications to perform their tasks, it is considered to conform to the Profile.
X/Open branding is much more powerful than most other certification schemes in that it delivers real assurance that the branded product purchased conforms to the relevant Standards. In contrast, other certification schemes typically go no further than certifying that a particular configuration of a product on a certain day passed all the tests that were run against it.
When a product is registered as X/Open Branded, the description and other relevant details are entered into The Open Group Register of Branded Products. This document lists all X/Open Branded products and is a valuable reference tool for prospective purchasers who need to know what branded products are available on the market. The Open Group distributes copies of this Register on demand.
In addition, each supplier who successfully brands a product receives X/Open Brand Certificates which clearly identify the product that is branded. Suppliers may use their certificates in their sales activities and promotional literature.
