PDF: CalConnect CalDAV Release.

McKinleyville, CA – March 20, 2007

“CalDAV is the first full open standard protocol for calendaring and scheduling client/server systems,” said Dave Thewlis, Executive Director of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (CalConnect) in response to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) publication of the Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV) as a Proposed Standard. “It provides the basis for true open calendaring between individuals and organizations.” IETF published RFC 4791 on March 16, 2007; IETF Proposed Standards are called RFCs (Requests for Comments).

CalConnect has determined that CalDAV will offer a significant new benefit to implementers and customers of calendaring systems. CalConnect has led the way in CalDAV interoperability testing with several of its members actively developing their own CalDAV products, as well as providing input into the development of the specification itself.

“Calendaring and scheduling systems are starting to be built around CalDAV servers and clients, both desktop and browser-based, offering a low-cost, interoperable calendaring and scheduling facility to any ISP or business,” Thewlis continued. “So in our efforts to promote interoperable calendaring, the publication of this standard by the IETF is a watershed event.”

CalConnect asserts that CalDAV will be important for several key reasons. First and foremost, it is an open standard built upon much of the preceding work in calendaring and scheduling standards. CalDAV implementations have been built as the standard itself developed and these efforts have helped to refine it. In addition, vendors are building calendaring solutions based on CalDAV into products other than mainstream calendar applications, such as project management tools. This all bodes well for wide adoption of this standard within the industry.

“In the future CalConnect will continue to host regular CalDAV interoperability events along with its usual calendar interoperability testing, and will continue to promote and develop the standard and use of it, in important areas such as mobile devices,” Thewlis noted.

CalDAV at Work
A number of CalConnect members have advanced the implementation of CalDAV in their work, specifically, Apple, Marware, Mozilla Foundation, Open Source Applications Foundation, Oracle, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Maria Martin
Chief Operating Officer
Marware
“Marware is a proud supporter of the CalConnect consortium, and their work on CalDAV. We have integrated CalDAV support into an upcoming release of our Project X project management application for Mac OS X.”

Don Deutsch
Vice President Standards Strategy and Architecture Oracle

“This is the most exciting progress we’ve seen in our 12 years of involvement defining open Calendaring and Scheduling standards. Having co-authored the CalDAV specification, Oracle plans to support it as part of a future release of our collaborative product. The support of this standard will enable customers to provide their end user communities with a choice of calendaring interfaces and allows partners to more easily and cost-effectively develop derivative products and services.”

Katie Parlante
VP, Engineering
OSAF
"CalDAV is a critical part of our interoperability strategy. We support CalDAV in both our Chandler™ desktop client and our server product. We are pleased to see steady progress and increasing adoption of CalDAV. Calendaring adoption is really subject to 'network effects'; with more adoption, the more valuable the standards become."

Gary Schwartz
Director Communications & Middleware Technologies
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
“RPI’s Bedework, an open-source, standards-compliant, calendaring server, was designed to be CalDAV capable from its inception. We began implementing CalDAV support in January 2005, when we first learned of CalDAV. It was clear to us then, two years ago, that CalDAV would play a significant role in calendaring interoperability, and with the publication of the CalDAV RFC, and the increasing number of CalDAV implementations, CalDAV is fulfilling this promise.”