07/26/2004

The Integration Consortium (IC), The Open Group and the Object Management Group(OMG) say they’ve have entered into a strategic collaboration, for all parties to come together and start establishing The Open Group's TOGAF Architecture Development Method (TOGAF ADM) and OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) as key components of the IC's recently launched Global Integration Framework (GIF).

They provided the following details:

Included in the launch of the GIF at the IC's Global EAI Summit in May were The Open Group's TOGAF ADM and OMG's MDA. The TOGAF ADM provides the framework with a guide for creating a standardized, enterprise architecture that companies refer to during integration projects. OMG's Model Driven Architecture supplies the GIF with the industry-standard Unified Modeling Language (UML) and a set of profiles that help automate the transformations on the path from business model to coded application. Following the launch, the three organizations will work together to combine the complementary capabilities of TOGAF ADM, MDA, and the GIF into an architecture and process that simplify application interoperability and streamline integration. The three organizations will meet together during an upcoming OMG meeting in Washington, D.C.

"The Integration Consortium was created to foster collaboration between all integration stakeholders. The foresight shown by our collective organizations is a powerful message that the integration industry is moving forward proactively," remarked Michael Kuhbock, Co-Chairman and Founder of the Integration Consortium.

John Schmidt, President of the Integration Consortium, stated, "The GIF goals are to unify various dimensions of integration as a discipline including terminology, methodology, software frameworks and architecture. In order to achieve these goals, the Integration Consortium is driving a series of reference implementations through its various teams with an end-user organization at the core of each effort. The set of standards under the MDA and TOGAF umbrellas are an essential element of a formal discipline for integration and necessary to achieve the desired cost efficiencies and transparency between business users, IT providers and IS implementers."

"Our joint work with the Integration Consortium and OMG on solving interoperability challenges and bridging the gap between creating an enterprise architecture and its implementation will bring substantial benefits to users, "said Allen Brown, the President and CEO of The Open Group. "The Open Group's members embrace the opportunity to make yet another step towards making their vision of Boundaryless Information Flow(TM) a reality." Terry Blevins, The Open Group's CIO added: "Coordination of activities among the consortia leverages the resources of all three organizations to reduce the confusion and fragmentation of customer resources and to increase understanding of architecture and integration processes."

"OMG is delighted to be part of a growing movement to establish connections between standardized technology frameworks such as the Integration Consortium's GIF and The Open Group's TOGAF ADM. With OMG's MDA, new opportunities for integration arise due to its unique ability to allow system infrastructures to evolve in response to a never-ending parade of platforms, while preserving and leveraging existing technology investments," said Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group.