The Open Group offers a fast, flexible, and cost-effective way to form and run special interest groups and consortia. The Open Group provides an infrastructure that meets the legal, member management, meeting and working group management, specification development, consensus review, publication, and IT service needs of any group. 

“The Open Group’s consortia services have been invaluable to us. We started as a grass-roots organization with no seed funding, and The Open Group took a long-term approach to investing in us a future customer, working with us to fashion programs that could help grow the organization over time without ‘breaking the bank.’ They also helped us develop a certification program tailored specifically to our needs, and launch it with a level of credibility we could not have achieved on our own. It would be hard to imagine a better partner.” Douglas C. Rice, Executive Vice President & CEO, Hotel Technology Next Generation

"From the beginning of our Standards Initiative, we've partnered with The Open Group to create two best practices, three technical standards, and a corresponding certification program. Their help, guidance, and expertise in the field of standardization has enabled the lottery industry to move forward with innovation and business development - a priority for the association‚s members.  I look forward to building on our past and current success." Clint Harris, Minnesota State Lottery Executive Director and NASPL President

The Open Group Edge
As an international consortium with over 18 years experience, we have developed expert methods of forming consortia and special interest groups, and delivering the services these groups require as they progress though their lifecycle. These services are in the area of strategy, management, innovation and research, standards development, certification and development of test suites.

Our Customers
Our customers include DMTF, HR-XML Consortium, Schools Interoperability Framework, Bluetooth, WAP, X.org, and a number of other organizations.
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see key relationships

Strategy Services
Our strategy services include setting and aligning business objectives based on business scenarios and user requirements where the business scenario process draws out specific, measurable, actionable, time-oriented objectives and helps organizations identify areas in which they should invest. We provide IT architecture services based on our proven methodology for developing technical architectures, and also offer our experience in determining user requirements, developing procurement strategies and establishing which specifications to build.
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Management Services
Our services range from initial set-up of a consortium (legal, financial, and organizational assistance) to support for ongoing management and operation, and provision of the infrastructure services necessary for successful operation (web-based collaboration, mailing lists and other). Our experience is based both on work for clients, and on managing our own internal affairs since 1984, including the merger of several organizations in the USA, Europe and Asia.
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Innovation & Research Services
Innovation and research activities include the hosting of open source and other collaborative projects, for which we also provide project management, technical resources and infrastructure services. In addition, The Open Group research and innovation team can provide technical research and consulting, with a particular focus on technology transfer from research to practical implementation.
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Standards Services
The Open Group has over 18 years of experience facilitating consensus to deliver standards both large and small.   In addition, we define best practices, and publish a number of guides and other publications to ensure and increase market uptake.

Our process provides management, facilitation employing our document review system that is specifically designed for collaborative document development, consensus review and voting.  Our process is designed to speed up the delivery and maximize the input from the technical experts engaged in the standards work.
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Certification Services
As the premier certification service provider of the IT industry, The Open Group offers a complete set of certification services, including policy definition, program development, and program operations. With over 15 years of experience, we have developed and operate industry based IT certification programs in several strategic areas, including UNIX ®, CORBA ®, LDAP, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and LSB ®. We developed and currently maintain conformance test suites for many technologies, including those for the programs listed above, the X Window System, Motif ®, Digital Video Broadcasting Multimedia Home Platform, Secure Electronic Transactions (SET), Common Data Security Architecture (CDSA), and Linux.

The Open Group has considerable skills in resolving conflicts and facilitating consensus among the complex legal, technical and commercial factors and pressures that underlie any certification program.
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Test Suites Development Services
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. We implement our testing services in-line with existing international standards and have a proven record of successful implementations against these standards. The Open Group has developed and currently maintains conformance test suites for many technologies, including UNIX ®, CORBA ®, LDAP, WAP, the X Window System, Motif ®, Digital Video Broadcasting Multimedia Home Platform, Secure Electronic Transactions (SET), Common Data Security Architecture (CDSA), and Linux. This depth and variety of experience has produced a development methodology and knowledge base that is unrivalled in the IT industry. In addition, The Open Group has run many interoperability events to allow vendors to come together and understand the extent to which their products will interoperate with those of their peers.
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Contact
For more information, please email us
email
Alternatively, you can call our sales team:
Mike Hickey in the USA  +1 (512) 343 9159
Chris Parnell  in the UK  +44 (0)118 902 3038