Open Solutions Alliance
Encyclopedia
The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) is a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving adoption of comprehensive open business solutions. Among its activities, the OSA will work with open solution ISV
s, system integrators, and the broader open source
community to improve interoperability among software
products by publishing best practice
s, promoting standards, and making tools and API
s available. This is expected to ensure the availability of integrated, rapidly deployable open application suites to business users.
developer
s got together to form an alliance dedicated to improving interoperability and awareness for enterprise class open business solutions. Open source development had proven itself at the operating system and middleware layers but had yet to make a significant impact at the application level. ISVs participating in the OSA kickoff meeting identified three important areas where collective action could be successful in lowering barriers to adoption of open solutions by business users:
All of those present agreed that none of these challenges could be readily addressed by any one vendor in isolation. Issues of awareness, interoperability and community are inherently collective in nature, such that collective action is needed to address them. This led to the decision to create a trade association
through which collective activity could be coordinated. The result was the OSA.
In December 2006, The Open Solutions Alliance was incorporated as a 501c6 in the State of California, and the initial founding members officially joined during January 2007.
, Bluenog, Chariot Solutions, CSC
, Concursive Corporation, CorraTech, Essentia, Ingres Corporation, IONA
, Jaspersoft
, Openbravo
, Palamida, Redmayne-Bentley, SourceForge.net
, Talend
, The Open Source Technology Alliance (TOSTA) and Unisys
.
Independent software vendor
Independent software vendor is a business term for companies specializing in making or selling software, designed for mass marketing or for niche markets...
s, system integrators, and the broader open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
community to improve interoperability among software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
products by publishing best practice
Best practice
A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark...
s, promoting standards, and making tools and API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
s available. This is expected to ensure the availability of integrated, rapidly deployable open application suites to business users.
History
In early November 2006, a group of open solutions and open source applicationApplication software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
developer
Software developer
A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
s got together to form an alliance dedicated to improving interoperability and awareness for enterprise class open business solutions. Open source development had proven itself at the operating system and middleware layers but had yet to make a significant impact at the application level. ISVs participating in the OSA kickoff meeting identified three important areas where collective action could be successful in lowering barriers to adoption of open solutions by business users:
- Define and promote guidelines and best practices for interoperability between applications.
- Foster a multivendor metacommunity of users, developers, and systems integrators.
- Drive awareness and advocacy about the benefits of open solutions for business customers.
All of those present agreed that none of these challenges could be readily addressed by any one vendor in isolation. Issues of awareness, interoperability and community are inherently collective in nature, such that collective action is needed to address them. This led to the decision to create a trade association
Industry trade group
A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association or sector association, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry...
through which collective activity could be coordinated. The result was the OSA.
In December 2006, The Open Solutions Alliance was incorporated as a 501c6 in the State of California, and the initial founding members officially joined during January 2007.
Members
The members of OSA include Black Duck SoftwareBlack Duck Software
Black Duck Software is a Massachusetts US private company. Black Duck Software pioneered the automation of mixed-origin software component reuse management...
, Bluenog, Chariot Solutions, CSC
Computer Sciences Corporation
Computer Sciences Corporation is an American information technology and business services company headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, USA...
, Concursive Corporation, CorraTech, Essentia, Ingres Corporation, IONA
IONA Technologies
IONA Technologies was an Irish software company. It was founded in 1991.The company began life as a campus company in Trinity College, Dublin and maintains headquarters in Dublin, Boston and Tokyo....
, Jaspersoft
JasperReports
Teodor Danciu began work on JasperReports in June 2001, the sf.net project was registered in September 2001 and JasperReports 0.1.5 was released on November 3, 2001.JasperReports Version 1.0 was released on July 21, 2005....
, Openbravo
Openbravo
Openbravo is a commercial open source software company. The head office of Openbravo S.L. is located in Pamplona, Spain. A sales office is located in Barcelona. The company is responsible for the development of two products: Openbravo ERP and Openbravo POS. For the worldwide distribution and...
, Palamida, Redmayne-Bentley, SourceForge.net
SourceForge
SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
, Talend
Talend Open Studio
Talend Open Studio is an open source data integration product developed by Talend and designed to combine, convert and update data in various locations across a business.- History :...
, The Open Source Technology Alliance (TOSTA) and Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
.
Board of directors
The OSA board consists of the following individuals:- Anthony Gold (Bluenog), President
- Deb Woods (Ingres), Treasurer
- Srinivas Polisetty (CSCComputer Sciences CorporationComputer Sciences Corporation is an American information technology and business services company headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, USA...
) - Josep Mitja (OpenbravoOpenbravoOpenbravo is a commercial open source software company. The head office of Openbravo S.L. is located in Pamplona, Spain. A sales office is located in Barcelona. The company is responsible for the development of two products: Openbravo ERP and Openbravo POS. For the worldwide distribution and...
)