The Securities Industry Middleware Council, Inc.
C/O SIAC Corporate Communications 2 Metrotech Center
Brooklyn, NY 11201

The Open Group and Securities Industry Middleware Council in Standards Initiative

Leading towards application integration standards

Contact: Eliot M. Solomon
Securities Industry Middleware Council
212 383 7726

Sally Long
The Open Group
781 376 8211

New York, NY -- The Securities Industry Middleware Council (SIMC) and The Open Group announced today SIMC will be a member of a newly created steering committee for The Open Group's new Application Integration Program. The steering committee, which will include a number of important IT organizations, will define the scope and objectives of the new Application Integration Program. The Program will seek to develop standards, reference models, and brands to make it easier for increasingly IT-dependent enterprises to integrate their applications with the growing variety of middleware technologies.

Middleware as currently provided for the enterprise often fails to meet objectives of easy integration into and graceful coexistence with existing IT investments. The most effective way to solve this problem is through ongoing focused programs that engage customers, middleware vendors, solutions providers, and system integrators. The Open Group and the Securities Industry Middleware Council each have demonstrated abilities to conduct such programs.

The Open Group (www.opengroup.org) is a consortium for Enabling Enterprise Integration. It is a vendor-neutral international organization with 15 years of experience specializing in collaborative programs that provide standard solutions for customer procurement. Its members include many of the world's leading users of information technology, information systems vendors, system integrators, and software suppliers.

The Securities Industry Middleware Council, Inc. (www.simc-inc.org) is an organization of firms that originate, execute, clear, or settle securities transactions, and affiliated vendors. SIMC has been active for two years with a mission to improve the quality of middleware delivered to the securities industry. Middleware practitioners from 40 securities firms and 20 vendors participate in SIMC activities.

In an existing relationship, The Open Group and SIMC have led the effort to integrate public key authentication and Kerberos-based authorization services now known as RFC 68.4. This initiative led to the adoption of new international standards from the IETF and others that will integrate these two major security technologies. Today's announcement signals the organizations' commitment to extending this success to other areas of middleware and application integration.

The Application Integration program will complement The Open Group's current Programs. These include security, systems management, architecture, and directory services. The use of middleware to integrate these services with each other, and with the enterprise's application suite will be the main agenda of the new program. The new program will

• provide a forum for users, middleware vendors, solutions providers, system integrators, and others to address issues of application integration
• identify customers' requirements for enterprise application integration standards, reference implementations, test suites and defined standard practices
• promote market awareness of solutions and practices that improve the quality of enterprise-wide application integration solutions.

The announcement of the new relationship was made at SIMC's third general meeting of the 1998-99 meeting calendar. Held at J. P. Morgan's 23 Wall Street meeting facility, the meeting addressed issues of "Enterprise Application Integration" from the perspective of the securities industry. The steering committee for The Open Group's Application Integration Program will meet for the first time next week at The Open Group's Members Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.