Proprietary Standards and Technologies

Many great technologies have failed simply because they were proprietary in nature. This is particularly noticeable when a proprietary technology faces competition from a whole bunch of interrelated technologies; from multiple manufacturers/vendors, that are based around an open standard.

Part of the reason is due to the very competitive nature of economies founded upon open market products and services and part is due to the restrictive nature of monopolistic proprietary technologies.

Compatibility and Interoperability

It is the area of commonality between various technologies that standards provide which ensures that the products and services from one manufacturer/vendor are compatible and interoperable with those of other manufacturers/vendors.

To illustrate the importance of the role provided by standards consider for a moment that you wish to manufacture a network interface card (NIC). Let us assume that you have the option of selecting from only two different specifications for your NIC. One of which is a proprietary and the other is an open standard.

Proprietary Standard - If you wish to rely upon a set of proprietary technologies you will need to enter into negotiations with the owner of that proprietary technology before you can use it or even begin to develop something similar yourself. The owner of the proprietary standard also has the prerogative to deny you out of hand any access to or use of their standard.

Open Standard - On the other hand; if you were to base your product around an open standard, then all you need do is approach the relevant standards authority for that technology and obtain the appropriate documentation regarding the specifications that your product must comply with. While this can sometimes be a little Draconian more often than not it is a boon.

One element of considerable weight here is that if your product is fully compliant with the prescribed standard; you can with considerable confidence, state that it will work (interoperate) with other products or services that are also based upon the same open standard specifications. All you need do is a little testing to verify the fact. This is something that proprietary technologies cannot deliver with any degree of certainty.

Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) Reference Model

A classic example of an interoperable open standard is the OSI Reference Model. Here we have a seven layered network protocol processing stack. All of the functions and requirements for each layer of the protocol processing stack are clearly stated and precisely defined.

As a manufacturer/developer all you need do is to ensure that the implementation you produce complies (abides) with the guidelines and specifications as stated in the OSI Reference model. If so; you will be able to rest assured that your processing stack implementation will be compatible with and interoperable with those produced by other; potentially unknown to you, manufacturers/developers.

The beauty here is that you do not need to know the nitty-gritty of the other manufacturer's processing stacks for both systems (yours and theirs) to reliably function interactively. In the case of the OSI Reference model this would mean that a successful conversation can be conducted between geographically separated end-systems. If this sounds familiar; it should, because this is indeed the way in which the Internet works.

Standards Definition, Documentation and Evangelism

Using the Internet as an example again we note that it (the Internet) is in fact a bunch of open standards-based technologies that the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) among others define and thoroughly document; each in their own areas of specialization.

In addition to the definition of the various standards and the production of the relevant accompanying documentation these organizations also actively pursue an evangelistic policy of ensuring that said documentation is widely known of and readily available and accessible to one and all.

The goal here is to ensure that all past, present, future and would-be hardware and software developers have a pertinent set of basic reference specifications to act as the core foundation upon which to build their products, applications and services.

Standards and Rapid Application Development (RAD)

Developing products compliant with the prevailing established prescribed standards means that new products can be brought to market considerably quicker than would otherwise be the case. Much of the development of today's information technology evolution and initiatives are squarely aligned with a Rapid Application Development (RAD) ethos.

Underpinning the RAD ethos are the principles of modularity, compartmentalization and reusability. The later point of reusability is of particular importance in software engineering as it facilitates a much faster delivery to market of new/improved technologies, products and services.

Metaphorically speaking the RAD ethos can be summed up as follows: if there is no truly good reason to reinvent the wheel; why bother?

IEEE 1394 (FireWire) v Universal Serial Bus (USB)

Let us have a quick look at an open standard and a proprietary standard to see what effects their open or closed inclinations have culminated in to date. The two I have elected to use to demonstrate this are the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) standard and the USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard. Both are directed toward providing a one interface does all for peripheral device connectivity and I/O operations.

With both technologies targeting the same market (peripheral device connectivity and I/O) they were fated to be in direct head-to-head competition with each other.

FireWire - In marked contrast to the open USB standard, the superior performing (in comparison to USB) IEEE 1394 (FireWire) started its life as a proprietary protocol. This meant that royalties had to be paid or some form of cooperation/peering needed to be negotiated in order for a manufacturer could use the technology.

Because FireWire is a bus this fact impacted motherboard and I/O adapter card manufacturers directly. The end result manifested as fewer numbers of more expensive devices being manufactured.

USB - To compound this even further; once the open USB protocol and standards were released, uptake of IEEE 1394 enabled devices dropped dramatically as a diverse array of substantially cheaper USB counterparts began to appear on the market.

Global Considerations and Influences

As with all things involving massively large-scale factors on the global stage, standards can become very loose and modified to reflect local objectives (political and otherwise) by a multiplicity of organizations in numerous countries.

Hence, it becomes necessary to formally develop and implement formal control, development, ratification and wide-spread implementation processes for standards development, documentation and implementation applicable from both generic and singularly specific perspectives.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

It was for these reasons along with many others (too many for me to list here) that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was formed. Globally speaking ISO is the premier general purpose standards organization today.

Think of ISO as being standards architects. Their mission was; and still is, to define the framework upon which standards applicable to both current and future technologies, protocols, products and services will be built.

Other Standards Organizations

Besides ISO there are a considerable number of other standards bodies and/or organizations throughout the world. As with ISO, some of these organizations have considerable presence and influence on the global scale while others don't.

However; unlike ISO they tend to be more specific, focusing their attentions and coverage to a numerically smaller more specialized range of interrelated (family) technologies. Some of the alternative Information Technology (IT) standards organizations with a global presence include:

• The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• The International Standards Organization (ISO)
• The Internet Society (ISOC)
• The Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• The Electronic Industries Association (EIA)
• The International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
• The Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG)
• The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)
• The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST)
• The American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
• The Telecommunications Association (TIA)
• Request For Comment - rfc-editor.org.
• The Project Management Institute (PMI)
• Payment Card Industry (PCI)

The Need for Collaboration and Partnerships

Note that many of the above organizations cover a considerable range and diversity of topics and technologies and that there can be a considerable degree of overlap of interest and authority between these organizations in a number of areas. The reasons for this state of affairs are historical, geographical, demographical, technological, fiscal and as a regulatory consequence or convenience.

Importantly; the majority of the larger authoritative organizations were originally founded some time ago in different geographical regions. Originally; each organization bore greater responsibility for its individual primary sphere of influence.

However; over time and with the advent of and continued exponential expansion of publically accessible mass air transport the world became a smaller place. These factors when combined with the arrival of a host of new technologies in the information revolution resulted not only in the formation of new authoritative bodies but existing ones expanded their influence into other areas both within and beyond their original sphere of local influence.

We have since experienced considerable clouding of technological realms to the extent that many of the original standards organizations saw fit to work on various technological standards collaboratively. For example; a transoceanic submarine communications cable required that both ends adopt and implement compatible technologies as well as entering into a mutually agreeable infrastructure costs sharing arrangement.

The settling upon this cooperative collaborative approach was also heavily influenced by the limited jurisdiction and regulatory enforceable control that each partner held or could exert in the others domicile country, state or city.

Goals, Objectives and Ideals

Most of the organizations listed above have as their driving goal the ideals of assisting engineers, manufacturers and business in solving basic production and distribution issues through the development of appropriate technical standards and specifications. Here are a few of the benefits that regulated standards and standardization deliver:

• Development of safer, cleaner, more efficient manufacturing, distribution, and supply of products and services thereby promoting easier and fairer trade practices beneficial to one and all
• To assist governments with a technical basis for health, safety and environmental legislation
• The dissemination and interchange of technology
• Safeguarding the rights and expectations of consumers and end users of existing and emerging technologies, products and services including the delivery of said technologies, products and services with a specific set minimal baseline Quality of Service and Expectancy

Payment Cards Industry (PCI)

In the case of the Payment Cards Industry (PCI), failure to comply with these standards generally results in the merchant/business having their trading rights revoked. This is a serious matter and as a result, merchant/business compliance is in excess of 99%.

The adoption on a global scale of the PCI standards is so universally high primarily because compliance is mandatory and the penalty for non-compliance is so high (removal of merchant privileges). We have also seen a wide adoption of the ISO 9000:2000 family of standards in the areas of quality control, quality management and quality assurance.

International Standards

Here are the highlights delivered through adoption of international standards:

Business Benefits - Local and international trade and business benefit from the "level playing field" that International Standards deliver to all competitors at both the regional and global market levels.

Consumer Benefits - Consumers in general benefit greatly from the adoption of international standards delivered by worldwide technology compliance and/or compatibility. This translates into ensuring the delivery of a greater all-round variety and diversity of products and services. These benefits to the consumer are further compounded by way of greater manufacturer/vendor competition delivering a superior competitive pricing of the products and/or services which they the consumer consumes.

Government Benefits - Governments implementing a consumption-based taxation structure (GST, VAT etc) reap great fiscal benefits as consumers and end-users consumer or use more products and services and business profits increase.

Government policy making is also more streamlined as standards based legislation can be enacted in whole, in part or with amendments by numerous countries. This also helps to create greater legislative uniformity on a global front with a commonality of illegality. What is illegal in one country is also illegal in most other countries. The same standards are being applied to the citizenry globally. This in turn promotes understanding and empathy which helps to increase tolerance and reduce conflict.

An example of consistency in cross-national boundaries legislation can be found in the European Union's privacy laws. It is important to understand that if any country external to the EU does not comply with the EU's requirements in this regard then great difficulty will be experienced by those attempting to conduct business with every EU member nation.

Policies

In short policy originates from within an organisation with the objective of delivering positive benefit or avoiding negative effect from the organisation's perspective. The degree of compliance with policy is generally not negotiable and the individual at fault will generally experience some form of penalty being imposed by their organisation. In this case the ultimate penalty would be termination of employment.

Standards

On the other hand standards tend to originate from without and may be voluntarily adopted by the organisation or their compliance may be forced upon an organisation by external forces such as government legislation or industry-wide recommendations. Standards infer compliance or opt-in. The degrees of compliance tend to be rigid in areas of regulatory need as failure to comply will ultimately result in penalties being imposed upon an organisation. Depending upon the breach incarceration may result.

The Importance of Standards

Now let us examine the concept of standards in a little more depth. We will begin by looking at the question “why do we need standards?”

Often the importance of standards goes unnoticed until we are faced with the scenario of a total lack of any standards and the chaos that ensues. Standards and the standards organisations that define them form the basis upon which technologies are developed and eventually delivered to our door.

It is through the roles played by standards and the standardisation that can result from them that we begin to see consistency and improvements in aspects such as: quality, safety, reliability, efficiency, interchangeability, and the provisioning and delivery of these benefits in the most economical (cost effective) manner. It is no good having the world's greatest product if it does not have the in-built capabilities to interact and interoperate with other devices.

Put simply we need standards in order to provide consistency and compatibility across the board for each and every class and type of device and technology. Areas of great complexity that need multitudes of individual components to interoperate in a carefully orchestrated manner; as is the case with most things in our electronic technological world today, are built on foundations based on standards and standardisation.

For example:

The Internet as we know it today has evolved through a number of various stages beginning with a simple transmission of information between a very limited number of geographically diverse systems.

• At first only text was transferred between end-points using a set of standards and protocols known as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) & the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Or as they are generally to as “the language of the web.”
• The protocol suite that was initially designed to address all of the issues involved in achieving this was defined as TCP/IP and the model that was built as a reference model to overcome the incompatibilities inherent in proprietary systems; the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) was formulated and standardised
• Then over time and as technology built on these foundations the transmission of graphics and other images became feasible. Sound was also transferred via the web.
• The quality of the images and sound transmitted improved. Compression technologies matured and the transfer of digital media such as music in the form of MP3 or photos as JPEG files became ever more popular.
• Building even more on our foundations (the OSI Reference Model and TCP/IP) all manner of digital media became transferable via the Internet. The advent of publically available, accessible and affordable email along with the popularity of e-commerce saw the massive explosion in growth of the Internet in the late 1980s and the .com (dot com) boom of the nineties.
• This explosion was fueled by the massive drop in prices of networking equipment; including PCs, home modems and network adaptors falling below $30 per unit. Added to this we saw the competition between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) become ever more intense and so we witnessed the birth of electronic communications between private individuals on a global scale.
• Eventually fully digital systems became the norm and such capabilities as streaming media, RSS feeds, and digital shopping and commerce became realities
• Today we are seeing this continue to evolve into such forms as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) at both the corporate and private levels. The capacity for us to “stay in touch” over vast distances still fuels the ever expanding realms of the Internet.

The point is that without standards and standardisation none of this would be possible; at least not now. Email is one of the more pervasive of the Internet technologies as we don't even need to be at any given physical location or at any specific particular device in order to receive or send it. The local library serves the same purpose as your home PC or the one at work and now even your mobile phone is getting in on the act.

Consider for a moment the scenario where vendor X's hardware, software and services were incompatible with those from vendor Y and you would have a world in which only those aligned with vendor X could intercommunicate and the same for vendor Y's customers. But neither would talk between the other.

What is a Standard?

A Standard is a published document which sets out the specifications and procedures that are designed to ensure that a material, product, method or service is fit for its purpose and consistently performs in the way it was intended.

A standard can be: open, proprietary, de facto, de jure, opt-in and even an opt-out standard all of which I will be discussing in the second part of this series. As the series unfolds I will be discussing such topics as:

• What is in a Standard?
• What are the Benefits of Standards?
• What is Standardisation?
• What are Standardisation Processes?
• What is Standards Compliance?
• Why Do We Have Standards Organisations And What Do They Do?
• I will provide a brief discussion of a select group of international standards organisations and the roles that they play in the scheme of things. I say select as most of the organisations that I will be discussing are in some way or another related to IT, networking, the Internet, computer systems, communications, security (especially IT related security SANS) as well as organisations that have a diverse influence across the board such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) and disaster related organisations as the tsunami disaster was very close to home (I reside in Australia as you probably have worked out by now).
• Standards, Conventions and Protocols
• The various forms and formats which different standards can adopt including white papers and Request For Comment (RFC)

So until next time enjoy!!