Open Standards and Open Source driving Open Innovation

This morning I had the great pleasure to speak about Open Standards and Open Source as sample cases and as drivers for Open Innovation. I was invited as a speaker by the local industry group IT Forum Rhein-Neckar with whom I have been collaborating for many years. The IT Forum regularly holds business breakfast briefings on hot, trendy and interesting topics.There is always a good audience - many people C-level leaders from local entreprises. My co-speaker was Prof. Koelmel from the University of Pforzheim/Germany who gave a very interesting overview on innovation management and open innovation strategies.

It was astonishing to get the feedback how positively IBM is perceived as far as openness and open innovation are concerned. Several people called IBM a role model on open innovation and on constantly transforming itself and adapting to the market place - including the use of open innovation for pertaining global leadership. 

I uploaded my slide deck on slide share for those who like to browse through:

Enquete-Kommission Internet und Digitale Gesellschaft veröffentlicht Zwischenbericht

The special committee on "the internet and the digital society" of the German parliament accepted their intermediate report earlier this week. The announcement and summary are published on the respective Website of the Bundestag. I had been invited as an expert and spoke in the sub-committee on interoperability, open standards and free software last year.

The summary is very promising. There are a number of excellent points in there - most notably:

• the benefit of open standards for innovation and for societal independence; 
• the important role of open source software for the internet and for innovation;
• to promote open standards by respective action in public procurement and by public authorities;
• the recommendation that public authorities should buy platform independent software. 

Congratulations to the Enquete Kommission for their work and these intermediate results. I would expect a number of folks will knock at their doors now and try to persuade them to refrain from such clear recommendations. The remarks about different opinions regarding business models etc. already indicates some such influence. But I am positive that the majority in the Enquete Kommission will stay firm - they have a number of good arguments for their excellent positions.

Some outlook on European standardisation in 2013

We are already in the third week of the New Year – and I hope it will be a truly Happy New Year for everyone.

A new year is always a good opportunity to give some outlook on what will be hot and on the agenda for the next 12 months. So I cannot resist of contributing my two cents, as well. So here's my list of what I expect regarding standardisation in 2013.

The high potential for innovation that lies in technology integration will further drive systemic standardisation as well as innovation policy around systemic standardisation:

We have seen several activities of this in the last years, most notably in the area of smart grid and – started recently in Europe – in the area of Cloud. The European Commission wishes to drive innovation and drive the adoption of innovative technologies. Standards play a key role because they ensure interoperability and promote fair competition. Systemic standardisation means to get an understanding of the standards that are available for integration and combination in order to realise the respective technology infrastructures.

For Cloud the European Commission has asked ETSI to coordinate with stakeholders the development of a Cloud standards roadmap. This task shall be completed in 2013 with a first draft being available middle of this year. Just to be clear: this is not about developing standards, it is about identifying the standards that are needed for the technology. In the case of Cloud almost all standards are already available – some functional gaps are being addressed in a number of global standards bodies. For ETIS the challenge is to get the governance right for the coordination work so that all interested parties can participate and that full transparency is ensured throughout the project.

I expect that similar systemic standardisation work will come up on the agenda – some triggered by innovation policy activities of governments. E-Mobility is such an activity that's on the horizon. The e-energy sector may provide for others.

The discussion about standardisation and Intellectual Property Rights will continue:

That's an easy prediction – especially since the Commission already announced that they will organise a workshop on FRAND and Injunctive Relief sometime in 2013. Indeed, a number of topics are being discussed with respect to standardisation and IPRs.

Regarding last November's conference on FRAND and Open Source the Commission made clear that they are not planning follow-on actions on the legal level. Nonetheless, the workshop clearly illustrated the issues that exist when Open Source communities would need to implement standards that are available under FRAND terms. Regarding standards bodies, some suggestions were made that they look at implementing Royalty-free options in order to become better positioned for dealing with Open Source.

This year's Commission conference will focus on other topics addressing the intersection between standardisation and IPRs. The overriding question is whether and where it might be possible to increase certainty or find some common levels of agreement for how to handle given commitments on licensing standards essential patents (SEPs); on how to agree on what makes a FRAND offer really fair and reasonable; under what circumstances should it be ok to have injunctions; how can it be better ensured that commitments remain valid when patents are transferred to new owners; etc. None of this is for regulation or legislation. It is about strengthening the commitment of members of standards bodies, about better processes and fair play. And whatever will be decided will never be able to avoid dispute and sometimes bad behaviour altogether. But it is good to further strive for improvements on the level of standards bodies' directives, IPR policies, etc.

The implementation of the new EU Regulation on standardisation will open up new opportunities for making use of ICT standards in Europe:

The new EU Regulation on standardisation has come into force with the beginning of the new year. For ICT this means some significant changes: (1) The ICT Multi-Stakeholder Platform – set up in a Commission Decision in Nov 2011 – will now act against the new Regulation as THE advisory body to the Commission on all standardisation-related topics; (2) ICT standards from global standards bodies can be identified and officially used in public procurement – based on advice of the ICT Multi-Stakeholder Platform regarding conformance with the requirements and criteria of Annex II of the Regulation.

In essence, both of the above means that Europe does have a largely improved environment for discussing and getting first hand and highly informed advice regarding the policy priorities of the Commission. And by being able to make use of global ICT standards on almost equal footing with European standards in procurement and in policies the Commission can make sure that those standards that need to used are actually available.

Standardisation and innovation – a topic still not fully explored:

A lot has been said about standardisation and innovation. Yet, the topic will remain as exciting as on the first day, I am sure. Innovation is critical for economic success, for growth and prosperity. Therefore, standardisation is a key element in innovation policy. I mentioned some examples above – Cloud, smart grid, e-mobility, etc.

Effective use of standards in the context of innovation policy requires policy makers to take into account the mechanisms of standards and how they promote innovation. This means in particular, to look into software interoperability and promote royalty-free standards for software interoperability so that the high potential for innovation that lies in the integration of SW components can be promoted.

IT Security will continue to be key topic around standardisation:

IT security has had high relevance for many years and this will certainly continue in 2013. Whether we talk about smart grids, e-mobility, Cloud, the internet and the world wide web in general, etc. - security and privacy are key aspects. And standardisation is of key importance in this context. Internationally, SC 27 in ISO/IEC JTC 1 is driving the work on security standardisation.

Interoperability will be continue to be a major issue for ICT infrastructures and -ecosystems:

Interoperability is one of the key reasons for standardisation and for promoting standards. And interoperability prevents single vendor lock-in and promotes fair competition .With the new EU Regulation in place public procurers have much better opportunities to promote interoperability by referencing global open standards in public tenders.

In this context, the work on National Interoperability Frameworks will continue reviewing in how far all the benefits of global open standards are already reaped with government IT infrastructures and with the requirements listed today. The new EU Regulation allows governments to be much more forward looking in terms of requiring open standards and thus promoting interoperability and open IT ecosystems.

The UK have set a new precedent in this respect with their open standards policy published last year. The relevance of open standards will, in this context, remain very high. And other governments around Europe and beyond will evaluated to what extend they move on further into the direction of open standards based procurement and ICT policies. 

Now, I am sure I missed some topics - and that others may have different expectations and observations from the ones I listed above. I am happy to discuss - just add a comment or drop me a message.

Merry.... merry .... merry

Digital Europe workshop on Cloud standards

Last week I had the honour and the pleasure of being a speaker at a workshop on Cloud standards organised and hosted by Digital Europe. We were three in the panel with Ken Ducatel from the European Commission (DG CONNECT), John Higgins (Director of Digital Europe) and myself.

This workshop was the first in a series of Cloud workshops organised by Digital Europe and triggered by the EU Communication on the Cloud Strategy for Europe.

I should say that as speakers we were pretty much aligned on one key topic: The work currently starting around ETSI of mapping the standardisation landscape in Cloud

• is coordination work on ETSI's side only, 
• should be totally open and transparent, 
• and should not require signing any agreement that contributors agree to ETSI's IPR policy or so.

I had prepared a deck as guidance for my contribution and as handout to the audience. I just uploaded it on slideshare - all the major other points I made are in there so I save the typing here... 




There was a good discussion during the event which was all-in-all very good - a good start for the series. Congratulations to Digital Europe.

Digital Europe position on the ITU discussions around internet governance

Following up from my last blog post on the Dubai meeting of the ITU where the proposals are discussed that ITU should play a stronger role around regulating the internet and around internet standardisation, I would like to point at the statement from Digital Europe issued in a press release recently.

Digital Europe urges the governments - who are the members of ITU with voting rights - to refrain from taking, as it were, a grip at the internet and to support the distributed multi-stakeholder approach that has been successful for years, instead. Along these lines Digital Europe drew up 8 concrete recommendations for the governments to take into account:

• "DIGITALEUROPE deems it critical to preserve the global multi-stakeholder, market-based and decentralized nature of internet governance. This will ensure that the substantial benefits already gained will be maintained and reinforced.
• "DIGITALEUROPE believes the revision of the ITRs is an opportunity to enshrine high-level principles of international telecommunications which have underpinned the success of telecommunications liberalisation.
• "The ITRs should emphasise policy approaches that promote telecommunications liberalisation by introducing competition overseen by independent regulators, focusing on private sector leadership and relying upon market based agreements for telecommunications services.
• "DIGITALEUROPE believes the scope of the ITRs should not be expanded to cover more entities or organisations.
• "DIGITALEUROPE believes the ITRs should not be revised in a way that grants the ITU authority over the internet or develops an international regulatory treaty for the internet.
• "DIGITALEUROPE does not support mandating ITU Recommendations in the ITRs; rather ITRs should enshrine a commitment to open, voluntary industry standards.
• "DIGITALEUROPE believes proposals or mandates that would effectively mean regulating internet interconnect should be rejected: they run the serious risk of fragmenting the internet, cutting off the developing world from internet content and thereby widening the digital divide.
• "DIGITALEUROPE recognises that genuine concerns about online criminal activity are being raised within the ITU. However, DIGITALEUROPE believes it would be more effective for governments to take these concerns through more targeted actions and on-going initiatives to promote international cooperation on cyber-security, rather than through an international telecommunications treaty. "

  Meanwhile also the press is full of articles on the Dubai meeting of ITU and on the discussion around control of the internet. Just use your favourite search engine and type in "ITU Dubai internet" and you will get a long list of links for articles and comments available online. Not all of them are good and neutral - but I am sure all of you will be able to apply a text critical approach. Definitely an interesting discussion that deserves to be followed by all of us who use the internet on a daily basis - and who benefit from it in multiple ways.

Relevant Link of today: Cold war about the internet

There is an interesting article in the online edition of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel titled  "Kalter Krieg ums Internet" (Cold War about the Internet). What may sound like a sexy title is, in fact, a report on the current ITU summit in Dubai where ITU's claims to be responsible for internet standardisation and administration and to go for a (hostile?) take over of work from IETF, ICANN, perhaps others like W3C, IEEE etc., are discussed.

According to the author of the article, the debate is about who controls the internet - about power with a threat to the openness and the freedom of the internet.

Against the background of this discussion and the claims from ITU, a number of global standards development organisations had published some principles under the name of OpenStand as the paradigm for "mondern standards development".