RE: [ebxml-iic] chairperson nomination

[Jacques Durand <JDurand@fs.fujitsu.com>]

Title: RE: [ebxml-iic] chairperson nomination

All,

A few of you honored me with a nomination for chairing the OASIS ebXML IIC TC,
and I am accepting this nomination.
I must say I have considered this responsibility in the past few days,
pondering the "overhead" associated with it, but have not made diligence on it
so far, because I know several other members would make perfectly fine chairpersons,
giving me then the opportunity to focus more exclusively on technical matters...

On the practical side, one of my best qualification for this job may reside
in the time and support my company allows me for now (and I am quite aware that this
is precisely constraints of this nature that will prevent some to consider the role.)

When looking back, in the last year and a half I participated in it,
the IIC TC - and former "POC"-, has had quite a ride, setting up amazing multi-company
choreographed demonstrations (no doubt fostering new talents as movie director),
and gathering strong support from participant companies.
I can only admire the job done so far by the group and its successive chairpersons.

Here are a few lines of actions I would promote - or maintain - if elected:

1. The focus of IIC has shifted more toward paving the way for the actual deployment
of ebXML in the enterprise. That means, keeping its implementations "honest" (conformance),
making sure that they can communicate (interoperability), and also that there
is a common understanding on how the specifications should be interpreted (implemented).
Last but not least, the IIC has also a feedback duty to the other TCs, as we all know how
iterative the nature of design is.
I would make my best to concretize these mission items, gathering resources and goodwill
 for (1) the publication of implementation guidelines,
(2) design and prototyping/development of testing technology.

2. The credibility of the standard will reside now in the ability to
deploy in real business environments, and to withstand the operating
constraints (robustness, scalability, performance, ease of use, of upgrade, etc.)
The IIC can certainly be a forum not just for implementors but also for users,
channeling valuable feedback, and requirements, to other TCs but also to implementors/ vendors.
An example of operating issue, is how to preserve  MS interoperability in increasingly
connected environments where version upgrades may be done in un-synchronized way
by each party: this affects as much the MS implementation as the way it will be deployed/operated.
(in other words there are dependencies between "implementation guidelines" and
"operation guidelines").
Also, the testing technology we would design/develop, should not just be considered as
a one-time procedure, as for product pre-release or QA, but also as an "interoperability 
maintenance" technology, to be used on a regular basis after deployment.

3. Then, as ebXML is getting some very significant endorsements from more vertical groups
(RosettaNet, OAG) as well as from the industries behind these, IIC should certainly
listen to the requirements from groups, and consider how implementations should
interface properly with their environments (configuration, APIs, profile of content),
as well as how testing technologies can be consolidated or reused.

Other challenges of very practical nature, that I am a little concerned with are:

A challenge will be to maintain a high-enough level of motivation and interest from
participating companies, as the marketing payoff of highly publicized demos
is no longer there...
(we need to be convincing enough that there will be new payoffs with the new actions...)

Another challenge will be for IIC to gather the "expertise bandwidth" necessary to cover
all standards of ebXML, along with enough understanding of other complementing (and competing)
standards. New forms of contributions - especially from other TCs -, more flexible than formal
membership, might need be considered.

Hoping you will agree with (enough of) the above, and that you will have
the opportunity and resources to help here too,

Sincerely,

Jacques Durand
Fujitsu
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Philippe De Smedt [mailto:pdesmedt@agentisinternational.com]
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 9:29 AM
To: ebxml-iic@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: karl.best@oasis-open.org
Subject: [ebxml-iic] e-mail voting approved for new chairperson

All,

Per the unanimous vote (13-0) taken in the conference call this morning, we
will allow voting by e-mail to fill the ebXML IIC TC chair vacancy. Voting
starts today and continues through 9AM Pacific time on Monday, March 11, at
which time the new chair will be announced in the regularly scheduled
conference call. The one with the most votes wins. Please monitor this list
to see who the candidates are. If you intend to be a candidate and have not
already done so, please send a brief statement of interest to this list.

Present in this morning's meeting were: Sanjay Cherian (Sterling Commerce),
Philippe De Smedt (Agentis Software), Jacques Durand (Fujitsu), Jeff Eck
(GE/GXS), David Fischer (Drummond Group), Kazunori Iwasa (Fujitsu), Michael
Kass (NIST), Matthew MacKenzie (XML Global), Himagiri Mukkamala (Sybase),
Prakash Sinha (Iona), Jeff Turpin (Cyclone Commerce), Pete Wenzel
(SeeBeyond), Steve Yung (Sun).

-Philippe

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