Standards and software – combining
innovation and interoperability
John A. Phillips – UK National
Standards Officer
8th June 2009

Contents
• The challenges and opportunities
• Learning the interoperability lesson from
telecoms standardization
• Dealing with innovation in software
• Standards and interoperability at Microsoft

A time of change
• This is a time of change. Today our customers have diverse
and complex needs that no single IT company alone can
address.
• Increasing globalization, rising Internet use, and higher
consumer and businesses expectations are driving
increased demand for technology choices and flexibility.
• Technology can present new opportunities and solve new
problems. Today, many governments and businesses alike
have assembled a diverse mix of applications and
technologies from a variety of vendors operating in mixed
IT environments.

The challenges and opportunities
• Right now we are seeing customers demand solutions to more
complex problems. Technical interoperability is usually achieved but
being augmented by new requirements for semantic, organizational
and political interoperability requirements.
• Thus the biggest challenge faced today is in constructing system
solutions requiring end-to-end interoperability with
– Multiple components from multiple vendors
– Room for innovation in platforms and applications
– Licensed or open-source software
– Capacity to cope with rapid development
– In-house hosted systems, or in the cloud
– Data preserving its meaning over time and across domains
– ...
• Interoperability = Choice

Telecoms: the PSTN, standards and
interoperability
• Although the ITU itself dates back to 18651, the formal
standardization processes are more recent.
• Two consultative committees were created by the ITU’s
1925 Paris conference to deal with the complexities of the
international telephone services (known as CCIF, as the
French acronym) and long-distance telegraphy (CCIT)2.
• In view of the basic similarity of many of the technical
problems faced by the CCIF and CCIT, a decision was taken
in 1956 to merge them to become the single International
Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, in
the French acronym) 2.
– 1 http://www.itu.int/net/about/history.aspx
– 2 http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/50/docs/ITU-T_50.pdf (p8)

Telecoms: newer telecommunication
systems
• As a result of decades of work on standards the
telephone network became the world’s biggest multi-
domain, multi-vendor machine and very reliable – but
it has a very simple service model and so the semantic
issues are simple to deal with.
• Newer systems such as GSM, 3G and 4G wireless
systems have had to use better standardization and
testing regimes to achieve world-wide interoperability
and reliability in a much shorter time; and they are
tackling the key issue of new and innovative services
and their interoperability.

Telecoms: new tools for ensuring
interoperability in new systems
• Test suites for conformance
• AND test suites for interoperability – they’re not
the same
• AND formal methods built in to the standard to
assist with conformance and interoperability
testing
• AND feedback to the standard from the
interoperability testing

Attacking interoperability in telecoms
standards (the ETSI process)
• ETSI’s initiatives to achieve interoperability
– Technical Committee Methods for Testing and
Specification (MTS)
• Based on ISO/EC 9646
• Defining most advanced test frameworks and test
methodologies
– Centre for Testing and Interoperability (CTI)
• Efficient and systematic Test Specification Development
• Customized Test Services
• Specialist Task Forces
– Plugtests service to perform interoperability testing

ETSI interoperability testing
• Plugtests, also known as bake-off (at
IETF), plugfests and interop:
– Provides feedback to the standardization process
– Helps to ensure end users’ satisfaction
– Improves both quality and features of
implementations
– Accelerates time to market via quick product
debugging

Interop testing session (ETSI)

What about innovation?
• Innovation and interoperability can sometimes sit
uncomfortably together but they can be made
compatible.
• But there are techniques in standards-writing:
– Rules for writing standards to allow innovation without
causing mis-operation
– Rules for implementing these techniques (often need to be
understood by implementers if they are not explicitly
written as part of the standard)
• Software standards writers can build in a protected
corner in their standards for private experiments on
innovative services.

Software – the challenge
• The software industry is much younger and has yet to grapple with
– More complex systems with more potential for major customer
dissatisfaction
– More innovative development model
– Becoming as critical to enterprises and to society as the telephone
networks
– More difficulty building the bridge between product planning and
standards
• Formal methods are largely absent from standardization and there’s
limited interop. Testing
• IETF has successfully used interoperability testing for small
systems, but today we have forthcoming semantic, organizational
and political problems coming ...
– NGN/SOA – a software version of the PSTN
– e-Health, e-Government, ...

Software – the first steps
• Need to address interoperability and
innovation in an increasingly multi-vendor
world and MS is doing this.
• MS bringing maturity to software standards by
focussing on interoperability: external
standards engagement team; internal product
engagement team; under the same
organization to connect the two.

Interoperability in Microsoft
Engagement
Product
Plans
Interop V-Teams
Plans
Standards Germany, Japan, France, U
K, India, Brussels, LATAM,
Team U.S., Canada, APAC, China,
Standards CEE, WE, MEA
Counseling Global Input
Business
Groups
Execution
Customers
Direct BG and Interop Team Engagement Governments
Standards bodies

Microsoft standards team
• External engagement team
– With Standards Development Organizations – to
contribute our expertise and monitor global
trends
• Internal engagement team
– With products – to build in product cycle
interoperability planning from the very start
• Working together under the same leadership
to make the connection

Microsoft is ...
• Committed to weaving interoperability into
the fabric of the company, and also through a
collaborative approach with different
communities, government and standards
bodies
• Committed to making software standards
mature enough with suitable tools to ensure
high-reliability interoperability in an
innovative multi-vendor environment

Q&A

Abstract
• The vibrancy and innovation of the software industry is
incredible. It has created the modern tools needed by
competitive enterprises. But raw innovation in the modern
multi-vendor, multi-domain environment can challenge
interoperability as implementers interpret standards in
different ways.
• The advanced software architect needs to combine
innovation and interoperability in complex systems to keep
customers happy.
• This session will explore the challenges today’s
standardisers in the software domain may face in building a
standardizing capability for system-wide interoperability.