The Brussels-based Standards Promotion & Application Group SPAG – has come out with a set of documentation written specifically to give clear descriptions of what Open Systems Interconnection products actually do, and which of their features actually lie within the OSI standard of interoperability. The Process to Support Interoperability, PSI, service is described as a multivendor code of conduct, and was developed by SPAG with its shareholding companies – Alcatel NV, Groupe Bull SA, Digital Equipment Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp, ICL Plc, Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA and Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG. PSI, which is supported by the EPHOS guide to public procurement, is a reaction to end-users’ belief that too much time has been spent focussing on the protocol aspect of interoperability – in which users aren’t at all interested. According to SPAG’s Michel Hordies, the actual functionality of OSI products hasn’t been described clearly enough. The PSI code will enable users to determine what features of a product described as X400-compliant will be supported by other, equally OSI, products on the same system. The idea is to determine a common set of functionality for any two products, he says. Using PSI, buyers will be able to reduce the risk of non-internetworking. SPAG currently has a PSI code set for X400 products, and says it will have one for the FTAM file transfer by year-end.
