Frontmatter

©December 1997, The Open Group All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

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Preface

The Open Group is a vendor-neutral, international consortium of more than 200 members whose mission is to cause the creation of a viable, global information infrastructure that provides the vital linkages between the billions of dollars worth of computing resources installed worldwide and the emerging Internet technologies. Among The Open Group's members are end-user organizations, including leaders in worldwide finance, government, academia, health care, commerce, and telecommunications, which have combined information technology (IT) budgets in excess of U.S.$55 billion annually.

To meet the needs of companies and organizations worldwide, The Open Group is facilitating the creation of the IT DialTone: a ubiquitous, trusted, reliable IT infrastructure that is as easy to use as the telephone, over which valuable operational business may be conducted.

In order for technologies to meet the aggressive goals of an IT DialTone, interoperability among different vendors' products and legacy systems must be ensured. The Open Group operates a program that provides the buyer with this assurance. The Open Brand allows vendors to guarantee their products' conformance to open standards. More than U.S.$23 billion in procurements worldwide have realized the business benefits of using the Open Brand in their IT purchases. This Practical Guide to the Open Brand provides a full explanation for use by vendors and buyers of open systems.

The Open Group was formed in February 1996 by merging X/Open Company Ltd. (founded in 1984) and the Open Software Foundation (founded in 1988). It is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts with more than 250 employees in offices and research facilities in Menlo Park, California; Reading, England; Brussels, Belgium; Grenoble, France; and Tokyo, Japan.

For more information see The Open Group web site at http://www.opengroup.org.