[announce] OASIS TC Adopts CRML XML Standard for Defining CustomerRelationships

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

OASIS Technical Committee Adopts CRML XML Standard for Defining Customer
Relationships

MSI Migrates Work to OASIS

Boston, MA, USA; 17 December 2001 -- The OASIS Customer Information
Quality (CIQ)) Technical Committee announced that it has accepted the
submission of CRML, the XML vocabulary specification that defines
customer relationships. Originally developed by MSI Business Solutions
Pty. Ltd., CRML provides an open, application- and vendor-independent
method for describing any type of customer relationship. The OASIS CIQ
Technical Committee plans to adopt CRML into its family of customer
information specifications including xCIL and xNAL, which define unique
customer characteristics.

"Up until now, the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee has concentrated on
defining standards to describe characteristics of a customer, such as
name, address, phone number, email, etc. Now with CRML, we are able to
describe relationships between customers from a business and personal
point of view," said Ram Kumar of MSI, chair of the OASIS CIQ Technical
Committee. "Because CRML uses xCIL and xNAL as the basis for its
vocabulary, it provides the third and final specification needed to
identify all aspects of customer information."

Under the CRML standard, a customer can be a person or an organization.
CRML accommodates complex customer relationships including
person-to-person, person-to-business, and business-to-business.

"The rapid adoption of e-business has created a new world of
interoperability between organizations, systems, processes, platforms,
tools and, most importantly, data," commented George Langley, director
and founder of MSI Business Solutions Pty. Ltd., a sponsor member of
OASIS. "To ensure reliability and success, it is necessary to define
standards that enable interoperability of data before we even start to
think about how other entities can interoperate. A standard way of
defining customer relationships and customer information is essential
for interoperability to occur. CRML is a major step towards achieving
this, and we are confident that migrating its development to OASIS will
result in the widest possible adoption of the standard."

"OASIS welcomes this submission from MSI," noted Karl Best, director of
technical operations for OASIS. "We applaud the growing trend for
vendors and industry groups to transfer their XML development efforts to
OASIS. We offer a centralized, vendor-neutral forum where developers can
collaborate and reach consensus on the use of standards through an open
process."

Industry Support for CRML

"CRML extends the capabilities of the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee
beyond standardizing the description of a customer's characteristics to
include their business and personal relationships. By enabling the
capture of non-address customer data, such as communication devices,
email, personal details, etc., CRML may enhance the value of ebXML as a
robust standard," says Marcus Goncalves, CTO of Virtual Access Networks.
"As a member of this OASIS technical committee, I'm pleased with the
results we achieved. CRML not only helps improve the interoperability of
XML-based data and applications--mainly eCRM and Web services--it can
also enhance UDDI's directory services functionality by providing a
global standard for name and address data."

David R.R. Webber of XML Global, another member of the OASIS CIQ
Technical Committee agreed, adding, "We intend to keep CRML as a
separate but related standard to xCIL and xNAL. By doing this, we see
CRML fitting into ebXML and possibly other areas such as UDDI and W3C
work."


About OASIS
OASIS (www.oasis-open.org) is the XML interoperability consortium,
advancing collaboration, convergence and adoption of open specifications
for structured information exchange. Members themselves set the OASIS
technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed
to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS is the
home for XML conformance, web services, security, business transactions,
electronic publishing, topic maps and other interoperability
specifications development.

OASIS has more than 400 corporate and individual members in 100
countries around the world. OASIS and the United Nations jointly sponsor
ebXML, a global framework for electronic business data exchange. OASIS
operates XML.org, a community clearinghouse for XML application schemas,
vocabularies and related documents. OASIS hosts The XML Cover Pages, an
online reference collection for interoperable markup language standards.

For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209