Accredited as an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) developer and a submitter of Industry Technical Agreements to the IEC, the VITA Standards Organization (VSO) provides its members with the ability to develop and to promote open technology standards.
Developing a complex open technology standard for critical embedded computing is no easy task. It takes a lot of talented people to pull together these sometimes very complex documents, review the content, and come to agreement on that content. The VSO is a forum for doing this difficult work, where the members of the working and study groups team up to make this effort more manageable.
Established in 1982 as the VMEbus Manufacturers Group, the VSO has undertaken the development of nearly 100 specifications, some very long and complex and others shorter and less complicated. The VSO has created more than 30 standards in the past 10 years that promote open technology systems. This is even more exceptional when you consider that the people working on these specifications usually have “day jobs” that consume the majority of their time, while VSO projects are done on the side with the support of their employers.
While the VSO has a very well defined process that is accredited by ANSI, this process is designed to accommodate the needs of this highly focused technology industry.
The VSO is currently chaired by Dean Holman, Mercury Computer Systems, and is monitored by VITA’s Technical Director, John Rynearson. As of this writing, there have been nearly 90 working or study groups formed, many with several subteams, since the working group format was established in the 1990s. New groups are formed at nearly every VSO bimonthly meeting. A simple three-company consensus can get a working or study group formed and on its way. The VSO has a liberal policy on which projects it will undertake, considering everything from hardware to software to reliability, with an emphasis on those standards that advance the cause for open technology used in critical embedded computing applications.
Each working group holds its own independent meetings either face-to-face or via Web meetings and conference calls on a schedule appropriate for that particular effort. The pace of the work effort is solely a function of how much energy the group puts into the effort. Some projects proceed very quickly, while others can take much longer to evolve as data is collected, concepts explored, and markets researched.
Once a project gets to the final approval stages, there is a well defined process to ensure that proper steps are followed to review and vote on the body of work. The first level of approval is at the working group where the specification must gain consensus from the members. The team can then decide to take the next step of obtaining ANSI ratification where the specification goes into the public domain for a second round of comments and voting. Once all open issues have been resolved per VSO policies, the specification can be submitted to ANSI for final approval. These last steps have built-in time frames to be sure that balloters have adequate time to properly review the body of work prior to voting. The process also ensures that a well balanced set of balloters has an opportunity to review the work; balloters from developers to implementers are required.
Not all work efforts result in completed specifications that mature into standards. Occasionally working groups will merge or shift efforts, as they better understand the requirements. Sometimes efforts are “parked,” to be restarted at a later time. A few are cancelled as better proposals are made that have a greater technological impact.
One of the most impressive facts about the VSO is the interesting blend of supply- and demand-side participation in the standards development process. This gives the working groups some great infusions of technology ideas and problem definition that are hard to find any place else. Engineers from the supply side have all kinds of interesting and innovative ideas on how to solve problems, while the demand-side contributors have firsthand knowledge of the problems that need to be solved. Combining the two during specification development ensures that a solid standard, one that can actually be accepted in the real world, emerges from the work effort. Very few standards development organizations have this kind of supply- and demand-side balance plus the accreditation of an organization such as ANSI.
The VSO is also a bit of a trendsetter in the area of disclosure and licensing of patents in standards, becoming the first standards developer in the world to receive guidance for “ex ante” procedures from any legal authority.
The policy has significant impact in two areas. The first is the change from a voluntary system to a mandatory system of disclosing essential patents and patent applications. The second area of impact is the Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) disclosure of maximum fees or royalties and the most restrictive license terms for licenses to technology essential to implementation of a standard in development by a working group. The VSO working groups are expected to make sound technical and business decisions. The objective of the policy is to eliminate patent ambush, which can delay or undermine the acceptance of new standards.
Within the VSO no one individual holds the power to decide what technology may become a standard – that power belongs solely to the membership.