Having seen the organization through to its merger with the Open Software Foundation, Geoff Morris, president and chief executive of X/Open Co Ltd since its inception in 1984, is resigning from the end of the month to pursue other business interests. Morris says he wants to get back into the for-profit world and into the software products industry. He expects to surface at a Web or Internet company. He will continue to act as a consultant to the organization. X/Open was created around operating system environments, is focused on interoperability and now faces the challenge of integrating with the Web and the Net, Morris says. The Open Software Foundation acting president and chief executive, Jim Bell, currently on secondment from Hewlett-Packard Co, becomes interim chief of the Open Group as well as president and chief executive of X/Open until a permanent replacement is chosen from one of three contenders now expected to be appointed within two months. Bell says the group extended its six-month recruitment search by two months because of an additional 130 nominations it has received in the past six weeks, bringing the number of candidates put forward for the job to 330. Whoever is finally chosen will work with a board whose composition is not yet decided. A management team selected to report to Open Group headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts includes X/Open’s Allen Brown, who will manage business operations and the group’s European site – X/Open in Reading; the Foundation’s Norma Clarke, who will oversee finance and administration; the Foundation’s Ira Goldstein, now responsible for the re-named Open Group Research Institute; X/Open’s Mike Lambert, responsible for specifications, architecture and standards development; the Foundation’s David Lounsbury, responsible for collaborative technology development (Pre-Structured Technology processess and others); and the Software Foundation’s Peter Shaw, who leads a single worldwide marketing and sales organization. X/Open’s Jeff Hansen assumes responsibility for worldwide corporate communications and brand marketing. Bell says the Open Group hopes to retain all Software Foundation and X/Open staff though he himself expects to return to Hewlett-Packard once a full-time chief executive is installed. In the meantime, although we were told by folks on one side of the house that the Software Foundation and X/Open names would likely be phased out long-term, Bell says that this is not the case.

Security Branding

The organizations remain as separate legal entities under the Open Group for the foreseeable future. The Open Group’s future projects include the X/Open Security Branding program, and an Open Software Foundation Distributed Computing Environment certification program, both expected in May. Longer-term initiatives include a requirements analysis program, or inbound marketing, a common documentation project, the formation of a European executive inner circle of data processing managers, expansion of ties with other organizations, including the World Wide Web consortium and the formal standards bodies, expanded technical development, and expansion into vertical market programs such as specification and technology development for the financial services industry. Users’ requirement list includes security – which will be addressed in May – and definition of a common architectural framework. The Open Group says it has adopted the US Department of Defense Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management already endorsed by X/Open. Interoperability will be addressed through a common testing program run by X/Open’s James de Raeve. Other projects include development of an open client interface for clustering personal computers and servers, development of X/Open’s Vision 2000 Internet and Web program, and distributed systems management offerings based on X/Open’s long-gestating definition work; apparently it’s still trying to decide what’s going on in the area.