Certification Business Scenario iv Revision 1.0, 1/23/2004
Preface
Certification impacts processes in standards development, product development, solutions, marketing, and
management. The key questions are what, where, how, and when do you need certification. It would be
difficult to certify everything—this would take way too much time and would cost too much money—and
it is not appropriate to certify everything. At the same time, “certification” means very different things to
different people in different environments. With that in mind, what is a realistic strategy for certification
and what role should consortia play?
The notes in this document resulted from a meeting of government and private sector IT executives. The
scope is, therefore, restricted to IT products and services. This document captures some crucial thoughts
that require attention when considering certification. Some of the assertions affirm, and some contradict,
popular notions about certification. Such popular notions include:
• Though quality (product not meeting the requirements now or in the future) is a prime motivator for
certification from a customer perspective as the end-user or in the supply chain, certification only
plays a simple role in quality. Quality is the result of much more than just certified products.
• Time and costs spent everywhere are ultimately passed on to the consumer of the products.
Certification costs end up affecting the price of the product and the time-to-market-availability.
• Use of certification in certain places and at certain times causes pain in terms of high costs, or a
negative impact on innovation.
• Lack of certified components in other situations causes pain in terms of uncertain quality and
interoperability.
The Open Group is sponsoring a broad look at the certification area. This report documents the first step
in that journey by documenting the thoughts of those that attended a Business Scenario Workshop to
discuss the merits and pitfalls of certification.
Motivation
The Open Group’s members are acting on a vision of Boundaryless Information Flow achieved through
global interoperability in a secure, reliable, and timely manner. Global interoperability implies the
pervasive presence of standards, but consumers of information technology often face a difficult choice
between standards-based solutions and non-standardized innovations designed to solve specific problems.
The challenge is to marshal the necessary resources and critical mass from the users of IT, the vendors of
IT, and the standards-related bodies to make standards and certification of conformance to standards a
productive and optimum part of the value chain. Choosing the right places for standardization and
certification for the right reasons is not easy to do. It is only with cooperative efforts among standards
organizations, user organizations, and vendor organizations that certification will achieve its optimal
benefit in supporting Boundaryless Information Flow.
This Business Scenario captures the thinking of a select group of IT executives from vendors, large
customers (including government), and standards development organizations regarding certification and
testing. The process will continue; but at this stage, they have identified the business value of certification
of conformance to standards, as well as the pain points related to doing it or not doing it. This document
delivers those findings.
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