IT Industry Standards Organizations

IT professionals need to pay attention to the industry standard bodies since they set the trends of the industry directions.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

W3C is the ultimate web standard site, a great place to learn web design and development.  W3C develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.
http://www.w3.org/

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards(OASIS)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.

Official Site: http://www.oasis-open.org/

OASIS promotes industry consensus and produces worldwide standards for security, Cloud computing, SOA, Web services, the Smart Grid, electronic publishing, emergency management, and other areas. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology.

The Consortium hosts two of the most widely respected information portals on XML and Web services standards, Cover Pages and XML.org. OASIS Member Sections include AMQP, Blue, CGM Open, eGov, Emergency, IDtrust, LegalXML, Open CSA, and WS-I.

OASIS was founded under the name "SGML Open" in 1993. It began as a consortium of vendors and users devoted to developing guidelines for interoperability among products that support the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The consortium changed its name to "OASIS" in 1998 to reflect an expanded scope of technical work.

Web services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)   -   http://www.ws-i.org/

WS-I is an open industry organization chartered to promote we services interoperability across platforms, operating systems, and programming languages. WS-I delivers practical guidance, best practices and resources for developing interoperable web services solutions.  WS-I is now part of OASIS.

CGM Open   -   http://www.cgmopen.org/

CGM Open is an international organization of vendors and users dedicated to open and interoperable standards for the exchange of graphical information. CGM Open is an affiliate member of OASIS, the XML interoperability consortium.

The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) 

UDDI is a cross-industry effort driven by major platform and software providers, as well as marketplace operators and e-business leaders within the OASIS standards consortium. UDDI protocol is one of the major building blocks required for successful Web services. http://uddi.xml.org/

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual.

http://www.ietf.org/

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers. The mission of ICANN is to coordinate, at the overall level, the global Internet’s systems of unique identifiers, and in particular to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifier systems.

http://www.icann.org/

The Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium enables people around the world to use computers in any language. Members of the Unicode Consortium develop the Unicode Standard, Unicode Locales (CLDR), and other standards. These specifications form the foundation for software internationalization in all major operating systems, search engines, applications, and the Web.

http://www.unicode.org/

The Object Management Group (OMG)

OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable enterprise applications. Its flagship specification is the multi-platform Model Driven Architecture (MDA), that is based on the modeling specifications the MOF, UML, XMI, and CWM.

http://www.omg.org/