Industry Leaders Score at Calendaring and Scheduling Interop
IBM, Oracle Demonstrate Conformance with Key Parts of IETF Specification; Interoperability Testing Highlights Need for Well-Focused Consortium
Berkeley, CA – August 20, 2004
On July 29-30, the University of California at Berkeley hosted the first calendaring consortium-sponsored testing event on the interoperable exchange of calendaring and scheduling information between dissimilar programs, platforms, and technologies.
“UC Berkeley has long depended on and fostered the use and development of standards,” noted Jeffrey McCullough, Principal Programmer, University of California, Berkeley. “Hosting this event was a great opportunity to further enhance interoperability in calendaring by providing forward thinking, standards compliant vendors a place to come together and test their products.”
The technical goal of the Interop was to test a set of specifications developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), specifically RFC 2445-6 and 7: iCalendar, iTIP and iMIP. Organizers produced the event to move the RFCs forward toward standards status as well as to ascertain the need for an industry/customer consortium on calendaring and scheduling.
Dr. Nathaniel S. Borenstein, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Lotus Division, said, “IBM’s Lotus Software helped lead the definition of the original iCal standards, and has supported them in our products since their publication in 1998. The standards represented an important step forward, but since then, the implementor community has learned a great deal about calendar interoperation.”
Regarding the Interop, Dr. Borenstein added, “IBM’s Lotus Software enthusiastically supports the efforts of the emerging Calendaring & Scheduling Consortium to revitalize the standards process and iron out the wrinkles that have kept Internet calendaring from reaching its full potential. We view this Interop as another step in the long march towards fully interoperable calendar systems, and look forward to further cooperation and progress.”
“Oracle is delighted to have contributed to this interoperability testing event for the benefit of our customers and the global calendaring and scheduling community,” said Marten den Haring, Director of Product Management, Oracle Collaboration Suite Calendar. “We support the development and promotion of emerging open standards as well as the efforts of a number of standards bodies, including the IETF. These efforts help build momentum for the adoption of an open protocol to access and manage calendaring information.”
Media Contact
Maryann Karinch
970-577-8500
maryann@karinch.com
Consortium Contact
Dave Thewlis
707-840-9391
dave.thewlis@calconnect.org