ISO FocusMay 2006...• ISO General Assembly in Canada • IT service managementThe Magazine of the...

• ISO General Assembly in Canada • IT service management

The Magazine of the International Organization for StandardizationVolume 3, No.5, May 2006, ISSN 1729-8709

ISO Focus

ISO General Assembly in Canada service management

The Digital Home

ISO General Assembly in Canada ••

ISO Focus is published 11 times a year (single issue : July-August). It is available in English.

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ISSN 1729-8709Printed in Switzerland

Cover photo and montage : ISO.

Contents

• Leading industry groups call for International Standards to shape the future of the digital home

• The quest for interoperability in the face of standards• Leading industry players ensure quick and effective rollout

of new services• The Home Gateway Initiative : Working together for a common goal • From well-being to entertainment• Home sweet home – When integration becomes a reality• ISO, IEC and ITU aim at a consistent set of standards for

home networking• Cooperation for the next generation of cabling standards• Deconstructing cabling construction in industrial premises • Cooperation between system and component committees• How to blend the best of all regions and industries into

a coherent system• Creating interoperable Digital Rights Management solutions

46 Developments and Initiatives• Preparing for the ISO General Assembly in Canada• Benchmarking provision of IT services• Looking ahead – A glimpse into microbeam analysis

53 Coming up

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The Digital Home

1 Comment Dr. George Arnold, ISO Vice President (Policy), Standards and the digital revolution in the home

2 World Scene Highlights of events from around the world

3 ISO SceneHighlights of news and developments from ISO members

4 Guest ViewJim Bell, Director of the Industry Standards Program Office for Hewlett-Packard Company

8 Main Focus

ISO Focus May 2006

CommentStandards and the digital revolution in the home

from more cooperation and collabora-tion among standards efforts.

The World Standards Cooperation (WSC), a collaborative effort of ISO, IEC and ITU, recently took an impor-tant step in this direction by organizing a workshop entitled “ Digital Technol-ogies in the Home.” This conference brought together, for the first time, an eminent group of 100 industry technol-ogists, academic experts, and standards professionals representing both consor-tia and formal bodies.

The presentations and discus-sions highlighted the breadth of techno-logical development, as well as stand-ards work addressing access, services, performance, quality of service, elec-tromagnetic interference, digital rights management, security issues and over-all networking.

The event also underscored the need for better cooperation and coordi-nation. I am pleased to say that ISO is committed to strengthening and expand-ing its collaboration with the many con-sortia and formal bodies working in this field so that we can ultimately realize the full potential of the digital revolu-tion in our homes.

ave you ever had the experience of buying a new digital enter-tainment or information appli-

ance for your home, eagerly anticipat-ing that it will enrich your lifestyle, only to find that it took hours to learn how to use it, or that it was not compatible with other devices in your home ?

For most of us, an everyday reminder of the challenge of interopera-bility is the stack of remote controls on the coffee table. But even for a technologist like me, there are other unpleasant mem-ories such as the day, six years ago, when I installed a wireless local area network in my home, only to find that conversations on my cordless telephone were suddenly rendered incomprehensible. These exam-ples illustrate the pitfalls of introducing new technologies to the market without the benefit of standards.

The rapid evolution of technology is creating wonderful new ways to enrich our home environment. High-definition TV, broadband access to high-definition multimedia content, video-on-demand, the ability to store and distribute broad-band content without having to re-wire, networked gaming, and the ability to automatically monitor and control sys-tems in one’s home are examples of new capabilities available on the market. Their application poses many challenges for consumers and equipment, service and content providers that can only be solved through standardization.

Efficient and interoperable encod-ing of multimedia information is the fun-damental bedrock of digital technolo-gy in the home. Fortunately, the neces-sary standardization work in this area has long been led by ISO in collabora-tion with IEC through ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 29/WG 11, known to most of us as the MPEG committee.

The MPEG series of standards is universally deployed in many famil-iar contexts, including DVDs, digital TV, MP3 players, and PC- and internet-based multimedia content.

The MPEG standards continue to evolve in exciting and innovative ways. But even with efficient means of storing and transporting multimedia information, the explosion in bandwidth needed to support mass deployment of future mul-timedia services is stressing the architec-ture of communications networks both within the home and over distances. New network architectures, employing opti-cal and wireless technologies, need to be deployed and many new standards are under development to make their reali-zation possible.

George Arnold, ISO Vice President (Policy)

“ ISO is proud to say that it is playing a leading role in developing these

solutions.”Another area in which standards

are needed is digital rights management, the subject of a panel session at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. We must strike a balance between the expec-tations of consumers who want to store, manage and use digital content that they have purchased, and the needs of con-tent producers to prevent unauthorized and illegal redistribution.

Consumers have a right to expect solutions that are interoperable and easy to use. ISO is proud to say that it is play-ing a leading role in developing these solutions, through the ongoing work of the MPEG committee.

New universal standards are need-ed for networking and control of infor-mation in the home.Numerous standards bodies and consortia have produced many excellent technologies that have facili-tated the early development of the mar-ket. However, consumers are faced with a daunting task of attempting to integrate a thick alphabet soup of de facto and de jure standards : HDMI, DVI, 1394, MHP, OCAP, UpnP, ZigBee, UWB, and the list goes on. Consumers and tech-nology providers alike would benefit

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ISO Focus May 2006 1

World Sceneestablished regular contact with the World Intellectual Property Organization.

For more information : [email protected]

Conference to address patient safety The Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) will hold its 10 th conference in Lübeck, Germany, 28 to 30 June. It will be hosted by its current Chair, the European Commission, and ISO represent-atives will attend the conference.

The conference theme is “ Design for Patient Safety in a Global Regulatory Model ”. It will cover issues from intellectual property and new and emerging technologies, to the principles of design for patient safety, how the Global Regulatory Model works and the use of standards in conformity assessment.

GHTF aims to ensure safety, effectiveness and quality of medical devices, which protect public health, promote techno-logical innovation and facilitate international trade, and provides a forum where representatives of member regulatory authorities and industry work towards con-vergence in regulatory practices.

The task force is comprised of representatives from Europe, Asia Pacific (Australia, Japan) and North America (Canada, USA).

For more information : www.ghtf.org

The A to Z of conformity assessment The International Trade Centre (ITC) has published a bulletin entitled “ An overview of conformity assessment in international trade ”.

Explained in simple, concise language, the bulletin

describes the ‘ A to Z ’ of

conformity assessment.

The bulletin also gives exam-ples of national and regional conformity assessment and other information sources.

The ITC is the technical coop-eration agency of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organiza-tion for operational, enterprise-orientated aspects of trade development.

For more information : www.intracen.org

Session on intellectual property rights The 25th Session of the Enforcement Committee of the World Customs Organization was held in Brussels, Belgium, in February 2006.

During this event an open ses-sion on Intellectual Property Rights Customs brought together international organi-zations, business associations, representatives of businesses owning intellectual property rights and service providers.

An OECD representative highlighted that counterfeit products account for 5 to 7 % of international trade. Speakers noted that this creates chal-lenges for fair trade, quality promotion, as well as health and safety.

It was confirmed that customs authorities are taking appro-priate actions (such as fines and/or destruction of products) within their borders. However, it appeared that border checks were not sufficient, and other initiatives at national and international levels would be necessary.

For more information :[email protected]

Gulf region workshopFor the first time, a standards development workshop brought together some 210 representatives from Gulf-area oil and gas companies, standardization organizations, service providers and manu-

facturers in Doha, Qatar, 3-4 April, 2006.

Speakers from an array of organizations made presenta-tions, including Qatar Petrole-um, Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Oil Company, Qatar General Organization of Standards and Metrology, Gulf Standards Organization, ISO, American Petroleum Institute, British Petroleum, the European Com-mittee for Standardization, Oil and Gas Producer Association, Petro Canada, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Total Group.

The two-day workshop reviewed and discussed corpo-rate, national, regional and international standardization needs and experiences, and the role of standards developing organizations in this sector. A roundtable session evoked lively discussion addressing today’s major challenges (i.e., harmonization, limited resources versus return on investment).

The event also provided the attendees with an overview of the international standardiza-tion development process with particular focus on the efforts/work and standards arising out of ISO and IEC technical committees for the sector.

The workshop was organized under the patronage of H.E. Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Atti-yah, Second Deputy Prime Minister And Minister of Energy and Industry, QP and the OGP.


From left : Alf Reidar Johansen, Standards Manager, Norsk Hydro ; Abdul-Aziz M. Maarafiya, Manager Technical Services, Qatar Petroleum ; Dr. Rashid Bin Fahad, General Secretary, Gulf Standardization Organization ; Essa R. Al-Kaabi, Director Administration, Qatar Petroleum ; Saad A. AlKubaisi, Manager Corporate Health, Safety and Environment,Qatar Petroleum ; Mohammad Bin Saif Al Anwar (absent), Qatar General Organization for Standards and Metrology ; and Alain Samne, Technical Group Manager, Engineering, Machinery and Energy, ISO Central Secretariat.

World water forumClose to 20 000 people from 140 countries, including experts

and representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private industry and civil society, attended the 4th World Water Forum held in March 2006 in Mexico City.

A total of 1 500 local actions were presented in line with the theme “ Local Actions

for Global Challenge ”. In a declaration adopted at the close of the forum, ministers representing the 140 countries reaffirmed their commitment to increase consideration for water as a priority for devel-opment.

The suite of future ISO standards for the assessment of water and wastewater services was featured in the forum’s programme of side events.

Expected to be issued in 2007, ISO standards (ISO 24510, ISO 24511 and ISO 24512) are being developed as a tool for assessing organizations involved in the provision of water services.

For more information : www.worldwaterforum4.org

Forum on substantive patent law treatyThe World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a forum in Geneva in March to discuss a number of outstanding issues concerning the draft Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT).

This treaty aims to align the sub-stantive requirements for the grant of patents in different countries.

One of the sessions was devoted to patents and standards and the issues arising from the inclusion of patented subject-matter in standards. It also reviewed important aspects of standardiz-ing organizations’ patent policies.

Aware of the importance of intellectual property, ISO partic-ipated in the Forum and has

2 ISO Focus May 2006

ISO SceneHarmonizing for gaseous fuels and vehicles

ISO will hold a roundta-ble on 10 January

2007 in Geneva, Switzerland, to address issues concerning glo-

bal harmonization of standards for natural

gas and hydrogen fuels.

In order to identify potential solu-tions to achieving coherent and effective global harmonization, participating stakeholders will discuss related infrastructure chal-lenges, aspects concerning on-road and off-road vehicle use of these fuels, and highlight the link-age of these standards to current and emerging regulatory needs.

Targeted attendees include : deci-sion-makers from multinational automotive, energy, infrastruc-ture and related companies, as well as relevant government rep-resentatives and international governmental and non-govern-mental organizations.

For more information :www.iso.org/iso/en/commcentre/events/2006/roundtable.html

Coffee subcommittee plenary

ISO technical committee ISO/TC 34, Food products, subcommittee SC 15, Coffee, held its plenary

meeting in March at the Coffee Exchange Hall in Hamburg har-bour, an important trading centre for the coffee industry.

The meeting was hosted by the DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung, ISO’s member for Germany.

The six participating members representing Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom dis-cussed several standards current-ly being developed, including the determination of the caffeine content in coffee and green cof-fee sampling for contamination.

The meeting was run by the Chair, Marino Petracco (Italy),

and also attended by the new Secretary, Cláudio Guerreiro (Brazil), and concluded with a visit to the largest coffee ware-house and processing unit in Europe at NKG Kala Hamburg, Germany.


Tourism to take new look at scope

The inaugural meeting of the ISO technical committee ISO/TC 228 for tourism and related services was held in Tunis, Tunisia, in March 2006.

Some 70 delegates attended the meeting, which was described as “ very dynamic ”, with lots of discussion and debate on its cur-rent scope.

The technical committee agreed on the need to review its current scope (mainly whether to remove “ Accommodation and catering ”). Towards this end, a task force was formed to draft a new “ scope ” for the work of the technical committee to be ready for review by 26 June 2006. It will be sent for approval by cor-respondence to all ISO/TC 228 participating members.

ISO/TC 228 is jointly adminis-tered by the ISO members from Spain (AENOR) and Tunisia (INNORPI).

Training in Rwanda and BurundiISO held a two-day training session at the Rwanda Bureau of Standards (RBS) and at the Bureau burundais de Normalisa-tion et Contrôle de la Qualité (BBN) in March.

Nine employees of each organi-zation attended the sessions. The ISO representative gave an overview of ISO, its activities and the importance and benefits

of international standardization. The sessions also looked at ISO e-services and how to create a Web site and database for stand-ards and technical committees at RBS and BBN.

The final day was dedicated to basic training of the supporting hardware and software used for the creation of a database for standards and technical commit-tees and the Web site template supplied with the publication “ Standards work on the net ”.

The training was funded through the ISO/DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung Endowment and implemented under the ISO Action Plan for Developing Countries 2005-2010.


Cosmetics committee holds plenary

The sixth plenary meeting of ISO/TC 217, Cosmetics, and parallel working group meetings held in Paris, France, in Febru-ary, was attended by more than 80 participants from 15 countries.

Among the meeting’s highlights was the approval of the newly updated ISO/TC 217 business plan.

Standards discussed included: microbiological, analytical methods, packaging and labe-ling, and the final draft of International Standard ISO/FDIS 22715.

Assessing the efficacy of sun protection products and their sun protection factors were dis-cussed and will be considered at the next meeting in October.


ISO regional workshop on conformity assessmentConformity assessment in sup-port of sustainable development and trade was the subject of an international workshop organ-ized by ISO in Amman, Jordan, 9-10 April, hosted by the Jordan Institution for Standards and

Metrology (JISM), the ISO member in Jordan.

Over 120 participants attended from 16 Arab countries and four international organizations took part in the workshop, which was organized in cooperation with the Arab Industrial Develop-ment and Mining Organization (AIDMO) and co-sponsored by ISO and the United Nations Industrial Development Organi-zation (UNIDO).

“With the globalization of trade and many other issues such as security, health or ecological concerns, International Stand-ards are in increasing demand both to define product require-ments and to promote good con-formity assessment practices”, said ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden.

The workshop provided the opportunity to review the latest developments of ISO standards and guides that help facilitate trade by ensuring that tests and certificates are accepted interna-tionally and by meeting require-ment for consumer and environ-mental protection.

Rwanda

Burundi

The World Trade Organization (WTO) representative highlighted the usefulness of referring to International Standards in line with commitments taken by the signatories of the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.

The ISO Secretary-General thanked the Director-General of JISM, Dr.Yaseen Khayyat and his staff for the perfect organization of the workshop which he said would be remembered as “an important milestone for the build-ing of conformity assessment capacity in the Arab region”.

For more information : [email protected]

From left : Mr. Talaat Al Dafer, Director General, AIDMO ; Mr. Sharif Ali Zu’bi, Minister of Industry and Trade, Jordan ; Mr. Alan Bryden, ISO Secretary-General ; Dr. Yaseen M. Khayyat, Director General, Jordan Institution for Standards & Metrology.


Guest View

Jim Bellim Bell is the Director of the Industry Standards Program Office for

Hewlett-Packard Company. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of a focused strategy for effective, coordinated participation by HP businesses in industry consortia and standards organizations.

He also represents HP on the Governing Board of The Open Group and the Advisory Council of the Worldwide Web Consortium.

During 1995 and 1996, he served for fifteen months as President and CEO of X/Open, President and CEO of OSF, and after their merger, President and CEO of The Open Group.

Prior to joining HP, Jim Bell managed various engineering functions at Digital Equipment Corporation from 1968 to 1980, serving as the Corporate Director of Research from 1973 to 1980. He previously held positions with Bell Labs, IBM, SRI International, Control Data Corporation, Northeastern University, and Stanford University.

He earned a BA from Dartmouth College, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.

approximately 750 standards com-mittees within about 200 industry standards organizations around the world. Many of these partic-ipants also hold influential lead-ership positions in key standards organizations.

HP’s Industry Standards Program Office (ISPO) contrib-utes to the success of the compa-ny’s businesses by leading effec-tive participation in industry con-sortia and standards organizations. As the coordination point for all of the company’s standards efforts, the ISPO is tasked with ensuring the horizontal alignment of HP’s decentralized standards programme. To accomplish this mission, the ISPO concentrates on three pri-mary areas : managing a focused standards strategy ; coordinating execution ; and creating an envi-ronment where our standards par-ticipants can achieve success.

ISO Focus : How does the HP Indus-try Standards Program Office work with the individual business units on standards development ?

Jim Bell : HP’s standards activities are heavily decentralized, with members of specific business units working on efforts most closely associated with their particular areas of expertise. At a micro level, this distributed approach helps ensure that HP has its best person-nel involved in particular development areas, and also helps ensure that stand-ards strategies are closely aligned with the business and technology strategies within the individual business units. Our individual business units also have mechanisms for coordinating standards strategies across their business.

“ Commitment to standards development is

a longstanding part of HP’s corporate culture.”

ISO Focus : What is the role of the HP Industry Standards Program Office ?

Jim Bell : Commitment to standards development is a longstanding part of HP’s corporate culture, and the compa-ny has received widespread recognition for our public advocacy and effective support for the open standards process. HP takes its role as a global standards innovator seriously, with more than 500 HP employees currently participating in

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At a macro level, the ISPO’s role is to focus on ensuring coordination of standards strategies across the entire company. One of the valuable resources we provide is a centralized, searchable database of all HP standards activities, which enables participants to quickly find the appropriate contacts for discuss-ing particular associations or technology areas. We provide training, consulting and mentoring for HP’s participants in standards development, and help them manage relationships with the different organizations and geographies. We also assist HP participants in managing the linkage between standards and intellec-tual property licensing.

HP BladeSystem bc 1500 Blade PC.

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ment worldwide, the growth of corpo-rate social responsibility (CSR) stand-ards and benchmarks, corporate scan-dals and CSR reporting have accelerat-ed the need to look beyond just finan-cial performance.

A growing body of evidence shows that CSR contributes to a number of pos-itive results, including increased profits, access to greater capital, reduced operat-ing costs/increased operational efficien-cy, enhanced brand image/reputation, increased sales and customer loyalty, and increased productivity and quality.

“ ISO 14001 has enhanced programme management effectiveness by providing

a set of common management processes

that can be integrated into business practices.”

The ISPO is responsible for set-ting HP’s overall standards strategy and processes, as well as for leadership in resolving issues across multiple product groups. The ISPO also works closely with HP’s Standards Strategy Review Board (SSRB), an internal organization made up of the top-level Chief Technol-ogy Officers (CTOs) from each of the business groups. As the overall owner and sponsor of the company’s indus-try standards programme, the SSRB has two important roles : first, it must approve any proposed standards actions that involve HP intel-lectual property ; and second, it is the ulti-mate resolution body for cross-company standards issues. The cross-business review process driven by the SSRB has played a critical role in increas-ing the quality of stra-tegic standards deci-sions throughout the company and in pro-tecting HP’s intellec-tual property.

ISO Focus : HP is among the companies chosen for the 2005 Dow Jones Sus-

tainability Index for the company’s ability to combine sustainabili-

ty with profitability. What is, in your view, the business case for investing in socially responsible actions ?

Jim Bell : The business case for investing in social-ly responsible actions continues to evolve along with the chang-ing business landscape.

Companies must now be increasingly more respon-

sive to the needs and views of a variety of stakehold-

ers. The growth and perform-ance of socially responsible invest-

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ISO Focus : What added value would you see in the International Standard giving guidelines on social responsi-bility being developed by ISO ? (ISO 26000)

Jim Bell : HP has a longstanding com-mitment to social responsibility which is integrated into our overall business strategy. We believe our social respon-sibility policies, standards and practices are substantive and effective. Since the ISO guidelines on social responsibili-ty are still in the early stages of devel-opment, added value is yet to be deter-mined. However, the potential for added value exists if the result is a document that sets itself apart from numerous existing similar documents by provid-ing better usability and more flexible applicability to a variety of stakehold-ers. This could lead to a higher proba-bility of universal acceptance and fos-ter cooperation among various stake-holder groups for overall gains in social responsibility.

Worker using HP Officepro K 550.


Guest View

ISO Focus : What concrete benefits has the implementation of ISO 14001 brought HP ?

Jim Bell : HP implemented an envi-ronmental management system (EMS) similar to ISO 14001 many years before that standard was introduced. There-fore, concrete benefits are more attrib-utable to historical EMS implementa-tion at HP rather than specific conform-ance to ISO 14001. However, ISO 14001 has enhanced programme management effectiveness by providing a set of com-mon management processes that can be integrated into business practices. In addition, certification to ISO 14001 has shown tangible benefits in being able to quickly and clearly demonstrate that we meet customer expectations for having an effective EMS.

ISO Focus : HP actively supported and has been a key participant in developing the ISO and IEC toner cartridge yield standard for mono-chrome laser printers (ISO/IEC 19752). What are the benefits of using

this common International Standard ? How does this approach illustrate, more generally, the benefits of other International Standards ?

Jim Bell : ISO/IEC 19752 is the only robust standard specifically designed for the measurement of monochrome electro-photographic printers. No other standard, national or international, com-bines definition of test page, end-of-life and test environment along with statis-tical analysis to accurately and repeat-ably measure cartridge yield.

familiar test page. For the manufacturer, it provides a universally-accepted sta-tistically-based method for measuring yield performance during all phases of printer design and manufacture.

This approach typifies the types of standards that HP supports : it meets a customer need using well-defined methods and good measurement prac-tices and provides a tool for design and manufacture. HP is continuing to sup-port the development to these types of standards by acting as the co-editor for colour electro-photographic and inkjet cartridge yield standards (ISO/IEC 19798, 24711 and 24712). All of these standards find their roots in the method-ology defined in ISO/IEC 19752.

ISO Focus : In concluding the WSC workshop on digital technologies in the home, leading industry groups called for International Standards to shape the future of the digital home and called for closer cooperation between the WSC partners, standards developing organizations (SDOs) and industry consortia. Do you have any

“ The conclusion reached at the WSC workshop on digital technologies in the home is well-aligned with

HP’s strategy.”

From the beginning of develop-ment, the needs of the customer and manufacturer have been top-of-mind. For the customer, the standard provides a common measurement method using a

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HP Pavillon Media Center PC.


thoughts on this con-clusion ? What are your aspirations for devel-opments in ISO and with its partners (i.e. IEC and ITU) ?

Jim Bell : HP has an established strategy guid-ing its work in stand-ards organizations. Ele-ments of this strategy include :

• Appreciation and sup-port for the variety of standards developing organizations (including the WSC partners, formal SDOs and industry fora) ;

• Participating in the venues which best match HP’s business objectives ;

• Promoting cooperation between organ-izations ;

• Identifying opportunities to elevate specifications to International Stand-ards.

working with industry partners and other stake-holders to create specifi-cations that support HP’s vision of the digital home. Along with our partners, we’ll be promoting these specifications and the products and solutions built upon them to our customers around the

world. As these specifications mature and demonstrate their acceptability in the global marketplace, we believe some of them may be candidates for Interna-tional Standardization.

As shown at the WSC workshop, there are numerous groups developing specifications and technologies in the digital home space. Many of these are competing solutions which do not co-exist or interoperate with each other. While HP welcomes the interest of ISO and its partner organizations and supports closer cooperation among all the players, we would caution that premature promulgation of regional standards as International Standards may create confusion in the market and hinder the progress toward conver-gence. We prefer instead that specifi-cations with international acceptance be adopted. We would urge continuing the dialogue begun at the WSC work-shop so the international organizations are well-positioned to produce Inter-national Standards that truly serve the needs of the global market.The conclusion reached at the

WSC workshop on digital technolo-gies in the home is well-aligned with HP’s strategy.

HP is active in a number of industry groups creating standards for the digital home, including Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), Consumer Electronics Associa-tion (CEA), Digital Living Network Alli-ance (DLNA), Digital Video Broadcast-ing Project (DVB) and Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), several of which par-ticipated in the WSC workshop. We’re

“ We would urge continuing the dialogue begun at

the WSC workshop so the international

organizations are well-positioned to produce

International Standards that truly serve the needs

of the global market.”

About HP

HP Corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, California, USA.

The Hewlett-Packard Company NYSE: HPQ, commonly known as HP, is one of the world’s largest information technology corpora-tions. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States, it has a global workforce of approximately 150 000 employees worldwide.

HP was founded in 1939 by Wil-liam Hewlett and David Packard in a garage behind the Packard’s Cali-fornia home. Today, the company is the second largest computer company in the USA and serves more than one billion customers in more than 170 countries on five continents.

HP is a provider of products, technol-ogies, solutions and services to indi-vidual consumers, small and medi-um-sized businesses and large enter-prises. Its offerings span enterprise storage and servers ; multi-vendor services, including technology sup-port and maintenance ; consulting and integration, and managed services ; personal computing and other access devices, and imaging and printing-related products and services.

During the fiscal year ended 31 October 2005, HP’s operations were organized into six business segments : storage and servers ; software ; serv-ices ; printing and imaging ; PCs ; and financial services.

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Main Focus

The Digital Home

Leading industry groups call for International Standards to shape the future of the digital home

by Elizabeth Gasiorowski-Denis, Journalist, Editor of ISO Focus, ISO Central Secretariat

ousehold connectivity is grow-ing rapidly with more and more electronic devices and networks

within the home distributing and using digital information and media. In addi-tion, remote control of lighting, heat-ing, appliance-use and security sys-tems attached to the home are making the “ digital home ” a reality. Given the various technologies involved, Interna-tional Standards that enable interoper-ability and security are seen as key to bringing value and versatility to con-sumers, making possible the use of diverse products, services and sourc-es, and therefore accelerating market development.

This was the key conclusion of a successful World Standards Coop-eration 1) (WSC) workshop bring-ing together some 100 experts from industry, the academic community and standards developing organizations, in Geneva, Switzerland, on 2 and 3 Feb-ruary 2006.

The event provided an over-view of the technologies as well as an examination of standards that address access, services, performance, quali-ty of service (QoS), electromagnetic interference, digital rights manage-ment (DRM), security issues and over-all networking.

Representatives from more than 15 leading industry groups, such as DNLA, DSL Forum and Zigbee, called for closer cooperation between the WSC partners, standards develop-ing organizations (SDOs) and indus-try consortia. They also agreed that

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The Digital Home

similar events designed to allow for the open exchange of ideas should be held in the future, in view of improv-ing coordination and avoiding dupli-cation of work.

Opening the two-day event, IEC Gener-al Secretary Ahar-on Amit said that the market, innovation, safety and regulation and competition drive International Stand-ards. Chief techni-cal officers, he said, were the best-placed

people to decide what is needed and when and this allows the IEC to do its work. In short, Mr. Amit said, “ we’re seeking guidance from you on what we’re doing, what we’re doing well, what we’re not doing well and what we should be doing.”

The two-day programme of the workshop reviewed the current state-of-the-art in home digital technology from the standardization perspective. Representatives from 14 leading elec-tronics manufacturers, 10 leading sys-tems service providers, academics and standards bodies examined the situa-tion and needs for standards in rela-tion to :

• Ways in which digital services are delivered to the home ;

• In-home networking ;

• How content is managed ;

• How equipment is managed ;

• Best practices.

Emphasis was placed on trends concerning broadband technologies, the way to ensuring connectivity and interoperability of devices within home networks and on the development of many new application areas – for exam-ple, ways in which recent technology can offer non-intrusive monitoring of those with diagnosed medical condi-tions, or of the elderly.

In his clos-ing remarks, ISO Secre-tary-General, Alan Bryden i n d i c a t e d that: “At the recent World E c o n o m -ic Forum in Davos, con-

vergence of information and communi-cation technologies and services for the

1) The World Standards Cooperation (WSC) is an initiative that aims to reinforce, and promote the voluntary consensus based International Standards system of ISO, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

benefit of consumers was highlighted as a key development, as well as a mani-festation of the knowledge revolution, at the centre of the ‘creative imperative’”. He added that “International Standards have a major role to play” and – refer-ring to the work of IEC, ITU and ISO – “we, ourselves need to converge”.

Houlin Zhao, D i r e c t o r , Te l e c o m -munication Standardiza-tion Bureau (TSB), ITU, wrapped up the workshop by reminding delegates of the history of successful cooperation between IEC, ITU and ISO. The three organizations, he said, are commit-ted to promoting and harmonizing the international standardization system, strengthening cooperation among themselves and with all partners con-cerned. He encouraged the members of the three organizations to support efforts at the international level, as well as the national and company level.

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Main Focus

The quest for interoperability in the face of standards

by Scott Smyers, Vice President, Network and Systems Architecture Division, Sony Electronics Inc.

The name of this article may sound more provocative than intend-ed, but in any case, the notion

of standards-based interoperability deserves discussion.

In one sense, standards are all about interoperability. The purpose of creating a standard, after all, is to reach consensus among interested par-ties on the technical details of some-thing, often some interface or some means of electronic communication, so that all who practice the resulting standard can create electronic gadg-ets that successfully pass signals and communication messages to other such gadgets, thereby realizing some vision of interoperability.

In the beginning…Historically, standards tend to be

rather specific, and there is no shortage of monumental success stories. Suc-cess story examples that come to my mind : the IEEE 802.3 family of stand-ards that defines the physical layer and data link layer of wired Ethernet1) ; the IEEE 802.11 family known as the Wi-Fi standard, denotes a set of Wire-less LAN/WLAN standards ; Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and HyperText Markup Language (HTML) – now an International Standard ISO/IEC 15445:2000.

There are many, many other good examples. But for this randomly chosen set, these standards, and their close relatives, have seen near ubiqui-tous deployment in commercial prod-ucts over a period of years. They have done nothing less than drive the inter-

net era, each in their specific role of defining the electrical signaling or high-er level protocols or message contents by which network devices talk to each other, and with global reach.

But interoperability in the con-text of each of these specific exam-ples, while essential, is invisible to those whom I like to call the “ consum-ers ”. The consumer, as I use the term here, is one who purchases electronic devices and expects them to work. In the pre-network era, consumers could and did buy many electronic devices that were stand-alone.

printer while all the intelligence need-ed for the storage or printing function takes place in a device driver loaded into the computer’s memory. The PC to peripheral interface is certainly stand-ards-based, but because much of the device function is handled in a device driver in the PC, very little above the physical interface needs to be the sub-ject of a standard. The requirement of interoperability in this context is lim-ited to the electrical signaling taking place on the PC-to-peripheral inter-face – whatever that is.

Interoperability in a complex networked system

Where we are now in the world is that virtually every device you purchase relies, for its function, on its ability to communicate electronically with other devices. The consumer is no longer pur-chasing a black box, or a dumb periph-eral intended to connect to a smart box that implements, in software, much of the device’s function. Rather, consumers today are purchasing high functioning network nodes which are components of a complex networked system.

For the envisioned system to work, the components must commu-nicate with one another at a very high level, far above the electrical signaling on the physical interface. Every device

1) One of the most widely implemented local-area network (LAN) protocols

“ For the envisioned system to work, the components must communicate with one another at a very

high level.”

In essence, electronic devic-es were black boxes, and while there was undoubtedly some form of elec-tronic communication going on within the box, most likely standards-based communication, the box itself could not communicate outside the box.

PC peripherals go one step fur-ther in that they communicate with a software-based computer that absorbs the complexity of the function, thereby enabling an asymmetric relationship between communicating devices.

For example, the PC peripher-al can be a storage device or a dumb

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_layer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_link_layer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_LAN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_LAN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Electrotechnical_Commission

The Digital Homemust have sufficient capability to oper-

ate as a peer in the overall networked system. Gone are the days when the complexity or brains of a device can be implemented in a software device driver on a PC.

If you accept the premise as I’ve described it so far, then you will better understand the spirit in which I titled this piece : “ The quest for interoper-ability in the face of standards.”

Interoperability today means network interoperability which means that while every standard implemented in a device is essential in its own right, it is the proper combination of stand-ards that is equally, if not more, impor-tant to the goal of interoperability as the consumer now expects it.

The Digital Living Network Alliance

It was this realization that moti-vated the formation of the Digital Liv-ing Network Alliance, or DLNA, in June of 2003. Within its constitution and bylaws, the DLNA is not able to create a technical standard, nor take control of a standard that already has a home in the standards arena. Rath-er, the DLNA is constrained to refer to existing and established industry standards in what are known as design guidelines.

In the three years since its for-mation, the DLNA has published sev-eral design guidelines, each building on the others to describe an interop-erable ecosystem of servers, players, controllers, printers, mobile devic-es and so-called renderers. In the course of that development, while it was clearly recognized that most of the elements of the DLNA interoper-ability stack are already internation-al standards, it didn’t seem relevant for the design guidelines themselves to become anything more than a pub-lication of the DLNA.

However, over the course of the last year, and after countless discussions and sincere deliberation, the DLNA is now convinced that making the design guidelines an international standard carries with it a whole host of advan-tages, and virtually no downside.

Close interaction with the international standards community

This decision was reached approximately six months ago, in late 2005, and the efforts of the DLNA management since then have result-ed in the successful, formal submis-sion of the latest, consolidated, com-prehensive design guideline for inter-national standardization through the International Electrotechnical Com-mission (IEC).

I am personally very much look-ing forward to completing the requi-site process to ultimately achieve inter-national standard status for the hard work of the DLNA, and I look forward to an ongoing, close interaction with the international standards communi-ty going forward.

However, the story of consumer-visible and meaningful network interop-erability does not stop here, and much more work is needed. Specifically, while the latest DLNA design guide-lines do create an important founda-tion of interoperability, it is essential that commercial content find its way onto the interoperable home network, and this, then, is properly the next tar-get for the DLNA.

Fortunately, nothing in the DLNA design guidelines needs to change in order to support commercial content. However, more layers are needed on top of the DLNA design guidelines in order to achieve the holy grail of convenient network access to lawful-ly acquired, digitally distributed and protected commercial content.

“ The only way to achieve content mobility in the rights-managed world is to focus on technologies

that realize interoperability among and between

disparate DRM systems.”

About the authorScott Smyers joined Sony Electronics in 1994, and is now Vice President of the Network and Systems Architecture Division of the US Advanced

Technologies Center. In the 1990s he performed pioneering work in the area of IEEE 1394 and stand-ards related to digital transmission (IEC 61883). Mr. Smyers also founded and chaired the Digital Transmission Discus-sion Group which resulted in the so-called “ 5C ”, otherwise known as “ DTCP ” copy protection system. Mr. Smyers has served as Chief Technology Officer and member of the Board of Directors of the 1394 Trade Association, and on the UPnP Steer-ing Committee. He now serves as the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and President of the DLNA Corporation, as well as the Chairman of the CE Linux Forum Steer-ing Committee. Mr. Smyers holds a BA in Physics and Philosophy from Cornell Uni-versity.

The DLNA design guidelines describe what features and options of the plethora of standards pieces are needed in order to get very high-lev-el, consumer-visible interoperability of networked devices. The DLNA design guidelines stay within the constraints of interoperability as required by each of the component technologies, but by combining those component standards into a larger structure, interoperability that is visible to the consumer and that adds value to the consumer’s experi-ence can be realized.

“ An international standard carries with it a whole host

of advantages, and virtually no downside.”


Main Focus

Leading industry players ensure quick and effective rollout of new services

by Gavin Young DSL Forum Technical Committee Chair

The DSL1) Forum is a consortium of approximately 200 leading industry players covering tele-

communications, equipment, comput-ing, networking and service provider companies.

Our work ensures that serv-ice providers are able to roll out new services quickly and effectively, using common platforms and practices that makes all they do easily scalable, and economical. In meeting its core objec-tives, the Forum establishes essential and proven processes for broadband delivery that empowers providers to provision, troubleshoot and to main-tain quality broadband products and applications.

Ever-evolving technologyEstablished in 1994, the DSL

Forum has moved through defining the core digital subscriber line tech-nology to establishing advanced archi-tecture standards that are applicable across broadband technologies – i.e. Passive Optical Network (PON) fibre, Worldwide Interoperability for Micro-wave Access (WiMAX) radio, and in some cases cable – and to maximiz-ing effectiveness in deployment, reach and application support. The scope of the Forum’s work encompasses the full end-to-end broadband service delivery chain (see Figure 1 below).

Remote management practices

Best practices for auto-config-uration, flow-through provisioning, equipment interoperability and other key facilitators of scaleable, global, mass-market deployment of DSL broadband, are fast-tracked by DSL Forum.

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As is its style, the DNLA will not create technologies to handle com-mercial content, but rather create addi-tional design guidelines that refer to open industry standards that collec-tively meet the goals. But let’s take a look at exactly what the goal is.

Addressing digital rights management interoperability

Commercial content must be pro-tected, and the technologies that protect commercial content are generally known as digital rights management technolo-gies, or DRMs. One approach to han-dling commercial content on the DLNA network is to choose one DRM system and require its use in all devices.

However, the DLNA decided more than one year ago that at any point in history there will be more than one DRM system in operation in the world. The only way to achieve content mobility in the rights-managed world is to focus on technologies that realize interoper-ability among and between disparate DRM systems. DRM interoperability, then, quite naturally becomes the goal of the DLNA.

As of this time of the writing, there are only a handful of standards-based technologies that address the issue of DRM interoperability. The Coral Con-sortium is one, high-profile, obvious choice ; the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project , which is developing a Content Protection and Copy Manage-ment system for protecting content after it has been received (DVB-CPCM), is another that cannot be ignored.

I am happy to report that prin-cipals of both those organizations are talking in formal and informal means to sort out this next challenge to con-sumer interoperability. I am also quite optimistic that rational forces will pre-vail and that we, speaking as a player in multiple industries, will have deliv-ered on the promise to the consumer of device and content interoperability, and all the seamless nuances that implies – based, of course, on international stand-ards.

Figure 1 – DSLHomeTM completed technical work.

1 DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is a technology for bringing high-bandwidth information to homes and small businesses over ordinary copper telephone lines.


The Digital Home

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Over the years we have moved from simple modem sync to today’s model for remote device management (RDM), which provides the essentials for provisioning and maintaining a wide range of devices behind a gateway.

Embracing the challenge of simultaneous triple play application delivery, the Forum has worked to establish the specification for a high-ly responsive and stable network con-figuration, as well as set the stand-ards for remote and local manage-ment practices.

The DSL Forum has developed technical reports (TR) that address each of these four areas :

• Extended DSL options to meet various speeds, distance and traf-fic needs – Asymmetric Digit-al Subscriber Lines (ADSL) and ADSL2plus ; Symmetric High-Speed Digital Subscriber Line (SHDSL) ; Very high speed Digital Subscriber Lines (VDSL) and sec-ond generation VDSL (VDSL2) ; and “ DSL Anywhere ” Paper, RE-DSL ;

• Simplified installation as well as automated service provider order flow in varied technical reports ;

Figure 2 – (Courtesy of Siemens, 2006).

• Empowered customer equipment choice by driving interoperabili-ty ; and

• Improved architecture to support advanced services.

Standards for network architecture

Over the years, the Forum has also worked extensively on developing network architecture standards. This work is key to DSL success. Stand-ards shape the broadband evolution according to the views and needs of all players involved, and enable region-al and global interoperability of net-work equipment.

Open access architecture is crucial for the easy adoption of new services. The standards evolve over the years to meet the new challenges presented by emerging applications, such as video.

When considering architecture requirements, providers must look at how to support a multimedia services portfolio, and assess their need for :

• more bandwidth ;

Access Aggregation Edge

Additional Intelligence in

access ?

Move towards cost-effective

Ethernet?

How to treat quality of ser-

vice?

Internet

VideoServer

Broadcast TV

Softswitch

Service Intelligence all the Way

> Multicast> QoS> Reliability> Scalability> Multiple content sources> Different business models (wholesale)

Figure 3 – Service intelligence all the way.

“ Standards shape the broadband evolution and

enable regional and global interoperability of network

equipment.”

New service

establishment


Main Focus

• more features ; and

• efficient network and service management.

Since 1999, the Forum has released critical standards to help answer these questions and move the industry toward common platforms :

TR-025 (1999) :

• Access to legacy Internet service pro-vider data services over ADSL ;

• Replicates Point to Point Protocol (PPP) techniques used in dial-up Internet access ;

• Mainly a wholesale model for access providers ;

• Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) being the dominant direction at the time.

TR-058 / TR-059 & TR-92 (2003, 2004) :

• Focus on multi-service ;

• Introduced “ application service provider connection model ” (A10-ASP interface) => more value to access provider ;

• Service rate control moved from DSL rate training in the Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplex-er (DSLAM)2) to packet policing/shaping in the Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS)3) ;

• TR-092 : BRAS requirements to meet TR-059 architecture.

TR-101 (2006)

• Coordinating service rate manage-ment and multicast delivery in an Ethernet4) network.

Broadening the use of Ethernet

A lot of work has gone into the development of one of our newest technical reports, TR-101, Migration to Ethernet for DSL Aggregation. This key document furnishes service pro-viders with the roadmap for migration from an ATM 5) core network to Ether-net, empowering these features :

• Scales more cost-effectively to 1 gigabit and 10 gigabit network speeds ;

• Dissociates layer 2 connectivity from quality of service (QoS) to simplify service provider provi-sioning ;

• Improves QoS via Ethernet/IP tech-niques and per-subscriber hierar-chical scheduling.

(See Figure 4 below.)

RG DSLAEthernet

switch(es) BRAS/BNG

Customer Premises Network

Access Network

NSP Network

ASP Network

LNS

IP router

Application Server

A10-NSP

A10-ASP

TR-025TR-059

IP Regional Network

Ethernet Aggregation Network- No impact on existing IP services- No impact on existing connectivity models

As Ethernet is the “ middle mile ” solution for all emerging networks, TR-101 provides the tools needed to help service providers implement for maximum benefits including :

• Reduced costs per Mbit/s for mid-dle mile transport and equipment ports costs ;

• Meeting the demands for faster middle mile driven by :

– ADSL2plus and VDSL2 based products ;

– Increasing trend towards IPTV over DSL.

Over the years, the Forum has driven the global standardization of ADSL, ADSL2plus, SHDSL, VDSL and VDSL2, and is providing the test plans, test events, and the interopera-bility demonstrations that set the bar for industry-wide interoperability of each flavour of DSL.

These DSL flavours provide a complete portfolio of digital subscrib-er line technologies designed to deliv-er ubiquitous broadband services for a wide range of situations and appli-cations that will continue the trans-formation of our daily lives in this online world.

2) Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) is a network device, usually at a telephone company central office, that receives signals from multiple customer Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections and puts the signals on a high-speed backbone line using multiplexing techniques.

3) Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS) is a device that terminates remote users at the corporate network or Internet users at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) network.

4) Ethernet is the most widely-installed local area network technology.

5) Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). A high bandwidth, high speed (up to 155 Mbps), controlled-delay fixed-size packet switching and transmission system integrating multiple data types (voice, video, and data). Figure 4 – Network migration to Ethernet (Courtesy of Alcatel, 2006).


The Digital Home

About the authorGavin Young is the DSL Forum Technical Com-mittee Chair. He is a founding director of the Forum and served on its board for six years. He previ-ously led the

Network Migration and VDSL working groups within the Forum and is also Chief Architect at Bulldog Communications in the United Kingdom.

Testing the technologyTo stimulate industry adherence,

the Forum works with test laboratories to host interoperability test events, and plugfests. Current tests are focused on ADSL2plus and VDSL2.

The Forum has also launched a global Independent Test Laborato-ry (ITL) programme, which recog-nizes laboratories that have agreed to administer our test plans. A European logo is now available for that region, for equipment that adheres to the test specifications.

All of these Forum achieve-ments are based directly on contribu-tions from member companies. Mem-ber companies contribute to the Forum work through the development of the technology and its effective delivery. They participate in technical and mar-keting working groups, sharing their knowledge, experience and expertise to create common, agreed protocols, processes and best practice recom-mendations, for use by the industry and for standards and other related industry bodies.

Marketing the benefits of broadband

Through its marketing activities – extensive, continuous global public and industry education campaigns, the DSL Forum also ensures a grow-ing international understanding of the benefits of DSL broadband.

The Forum does not work alone, but through liaison and work refer-ence to engage key industry organi-zations to develop industry consen-sus and solutions. Among them are the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Institute of Electri-cal and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), the Con-sumer Electronics Association (CEA), the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI), Multiple Streaming Engine (MuSE), Bean Scripting Framework (BSF) and Universal Plug and Play Forum (UPnP).

The DSL Forum was formed when the only deployments of DSL were a handful of trials. There are now around 150 million lines of DSL deployed around the world. Its work initially focused on recommendations for simply replicating the dial-up Inter-net access model at higher speeds. It has subsequently charted the course for architecture, equipment require-

ments and interoperability test plans to facilitate full multi-service delivery over copper pairs.

So where will we go next ? There is still plenty to do in order to propagate best practice approaches to the rollout and operation of the triple play of data, voice and video over DSL. Beyond that, perhaps the next phase will be increased industry focus on broadband Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) and asso-ciated policy management.

Outcomes of Forum work are published as Technical Reports for use throughout the global industry and all reports are available from our website www.dslforum.org. Further informa-tion on the DSL Forum, its work, mem-bers and meeting schedule also can be found at www.dslforum.org.

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http://www.dslforum.org

http://www.dslforum.org

Main Focus

The Home Gateway Initiative : Working together for a common goal

by Paolo Pastorino, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Business Officer of the Home Gateway Initiative

Home connectivity is finally evolv-ing from narrowband to broad-band. From the simple initial

voice service, home services evolved in the 1980s to data services, initially supported by fax and dial-up modems. At the start of the 21st century, the world has entered the age of broadband.

The Internet has been a major driver of the evolution to broadband, creating a new experience for the cus-tomer and offering new online services with the potential to provide high-qual-ity multimedia streaming, and advanced communication services.

Telecom operators are providing not only a broadband pipe anymore, but also an integrated set of services (digital TV, communication, fixed-mobile convergence) and an ecosys-tem of interoperable devices.

To make this happen, a low-cost, yet high-functionality device that acts as the gateway between the broadband network and the customer’s own home network is needed. This provides the means to deliver and distribute the new services in a quality manner, and allows the operator to test the network and provide some management and value-added features.

Broadband connectivity to the home

A home gateway is the device that provides broadband connectivity to the home, and delivers services to the home network and to the differ-ent devices and interfaces that form the home environment. It provides an excellent customer experience by allow-

ing an easy-to-use home environment where devices, networks and servic-es are seamlessly integrated within a homogeneous environment.

High value and opportunities for triple and multiple play services have been hampered until now by the lack of end-to-end standards. It is in this framework that the Home Gate-way Initiative (HGI) has emerged and positioned itself.

Current off-the-shelf broadband modems and routers lack some of the key hardware and software features required to support the new service vision in a reliable, flexible, cost-effec-tive way. What’s more, while planning the deployment of triple play services, many telecom operators went through customized developments of home gate-ways that used selected partners in order to get the full support they required. This process led to an increase in costs related to the home gateway and to a reduced efficiency in supporting the deployment of services.

A basis for deployment of services

The lack of commercially-avail-able devices led nine telecom operators (Belgacom, British Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, Telia-Sonera, NTT, Telefonica, Telecom Ita-lia) to start the Home Gateway Initia-tive in December 2004 and to open it to vendors in March 2005.

The goal of the HGI is to improve the interoperability of gateways with connected home devices throughout the world, as well as to reduce the costs of home gateways to customers.

The objective of the HGI is to set features available worldwide as a basis for deployment of services, with a view to reduce costs of home gateways and to reach a critical mass. Service providers will base their prof-itability on the services, while compe-tition will base it on service improve-ment and the mechanism supporting their fruition.

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The Digital HomeThe Home Gateway Initiative,

defined by home gateways, is a depend-able, transparent tool for delivering in a reliable and cost-effective way, easy-to-use value-added services over broad-band. The home gateway is not seen just as a generic, advanced modem-router, but as a service-enabling device that provides added value to both the cus-tomer and the service provider.

and technologies, the home gateway must provide a better user experience, a more efficient service provisioning and maintenance of services, a fully functional end-to-end ecosystem of networks, devices and services.

Home Gateway Initiative spec-ifications will be used as a reference in tenders and procurement activities and will represent an important frame-work for the development and design of equipment.

Standards are beneficial for the industry, but their value is measurable in terms of timing, industry support and benefits for the entire value chain.

Working with othersContribution to SDOs and coop-

eration with de facto bodies is in the DNA of the HGI. The task is not to be a new initiative, but to support impor-tant solutions and actions taken by other players and help accelerate the deploy-ment of services over broadband.

Cooperation with the Interna-tional Telecommunication Union and European Telecommunications Stand-ards Institute has already started. An

About the authorPaolo Pastorino is Chief Technol-ogy and Chief Business Officer of Home Gate-way Initiative. He manages sev-eral national and international projects in the broadband home

networking domain designing as well advanced architectures, network nodes, services and devices, and is the author of papers about home networking and a speaker at many international conferences. Paolo Pastorino holds a master of science degree in Physics and a masters in telecommunications and information technology. He is currently on professional leave from Telecom Italia to cover this role with the HGI.For more information see : http://www.homegateway.org

alignment of views and inputs received from other bodies (such as DSL Forum, the Digital Living Network Alliance, Wi-Fi Alliance, the TeleManagement Forum) working in the broadband home domain will happen on a regular basis as the HGI documents are released.

Home Gateway Initiative mem-bers have recognized that the right approach has been taken in trying to fill the gaps as more than 1/3 of them are not active in any other standardization activity, and most of them do not have sufficient support in other fora.

The importance of reaching a critical mass on the largest possible number of requirements led the HGI to define several “ musts ” and a just few “ shoulds ”, making its documents more usable in procurement and ten-ders. Regional/local markets options and features will be allowed as add-ons to the main core of the home gate-way specification.

The home gateway, defined by the HGI, is an access network inde-pendent device with increasing service support capabilities. It will answer to short- and mid-term needs of worldwide broadband-integrated telecom opera-tors, while being at the same time an added value for customers and device manufacturers. It is not a closed box, but the support to other widely avail-able and, possibly, profitable domains (devices/networks/services) will be guaranteed.

Providing fast answers to urgent needs

The HGI is designed to speci-fy a range of low-cost, high-capabil-ity end-to-end multi-service systems that provide communication tools for the residential and small office/home office environment based on a gate-way between access networks and service platforms on one side and networked devices and applications on the other.

The Home Gateway Initiative has been recognized in providing fast answers to urgent needs. It is expect-ed that its specifications will be trans-ferred to standard developing organi-zations (SDOs) with a view to having them accepted by all industry play-ers. Filling gaps and solving possible inconsistencies in standards is one of the major and more challenging tasks being undertaken by the HGI.

Independently of the home net-work and access network architecture

“ The Home Gateway provides

an excellent customer experience.”

The Home Gateway Initiative working method has been until now one of its key assets. Being able to pro-vide fast answers to the urgent needs of Telcos has helped to have a strong impact on the market beneficial for Tel-cos, industry, customers and standards developing organizations.

The short- to mid-term vision has helped to raise the interest of 68 key industry players (as of February 2006) that have become members of the HGI in one year since its official launch.

The Home Gateway Initiative will produce the first set of specifica-tions by June 2006, but all the working groups are already working on addi-tional sets of requirements covering the impact on the home gateway of fixed-mobile convergence, authenti-cation methods, advanced quality of service and management capabilities, session and service support.

“ Standards are beneficial for the industry.”


From well-being to entertainment

by Stephen Pattenden, Secretariat of The Application Home Initiative (TAHI)

We are entering a period where the connectivity of our homes to the Internet, and espe-

cially broadband connectivity, will become pervasive. It will enable many new services and change the rules for existing services to the home. These will impinge on both how we receive our entertainment, and on the ways in which we live at home.

There is also a backdrop of an increasingly aging population and a growing energy crisis. In many ways, we can address these trends by uti-lizing smart systems and services in the home.

Identifying users and their needs

The first point that should be understood is that almost every user and every home is different. We all have dif-ferent wants and needs and almost eve-ry home has different contents, layouts and systems, is built to different plans and for different climates. Services are

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Figure 1 – The variety of end-users

Main Focus

taken up by users as they need them, or become aware of them. New services are developed as new consumer needs are recognized, or as technology ena-bles them. As home-based infrastructure and home systems become established,

more services will emerge. There are many untapped user needs and serv-ices that have yet to be identified. To demonstrate the variety of users in the home, Figure 1 1) illustrates the series of axes on which we all lie.

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The Digital HomeAny one person or end user will

lie at the junction of many of these axes as shown in Figure 2.

Figures 1 and 2 demonstrate that each of us is different and our needs and homes are too. Of course, the early adopters will be filling their homes with all kinds of smart systems

and equipment, but most people pre-fer to wait until systems are commonly available and accommodate their needs before making use of them.

Naturally, there are some groups of people that will benefit more than others from specific systems. In some cases, for example, governments and administrations will reap cost savings by providing particular services and systems to certain groups of people.

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Figure 3 – Services with their estimated relative value and bandwidth requirements

(from market research by TAHI modified subjectively by more recent experience. This figure demonstrates the principle that the utility for a service depends on both supply and demand. This figure is intended to demonstrate a general principle rather than provide detailed comparison.)

INCOME

HOUSINGTECHNOLOGY

ACCESSIBILITY

ETHNICICITY

LOCALITY

SAMPLE PROFILE

Figure 2 – Sample user with their profile lying at a specific position on 6 axes.

1) Figures 1 & 2 adapted from author’s presentation at 2004 Accessibility conference in Brussels

.


Main Focus

A plethora of servicesThe widespread availability

of broadband infrastructure is for the first time removing the differentiation between service delivery of broadcast entertainment and low level systems in the home. Internet protocol-based delivery systems accommodate almost any service that is currently available or that will be potentially available in the future.

While the requirements of serv-ices differ in terms of quality of serv-ice (QoS), service level specification and priority, broadband-based Internet protocol services will soon be able to deliver any conceivable service.

Services range from entertain-ment (TV, Video on Demand and gam-ing), through services that bring care and well-being to people (especially the elderly and disabled) to specialist telecare systems, to energy manage-ment, and to systems that deliver peace of mind and conserve resources.

Figure 3, (preceeding page) adapted from work carried out by the Application Home Initiative (TAHI) shows a few of the potential servic-es to end users. It also seeks to show that to be successful a service must be needed as much by the user, as it is of value to the service provider. It indicates overall value and required bandwidth.

From energy efficiency to home comforts

While there will always be sim-ple services such as automatic meter reading or home security, the trend is towards services that utilize a wide range of sensors and devices which provide user feedback and information.

Because such services cut across system elements in a smart home, they must be capable of interoperation/inter-action ; as such, they become more complex but also extensible.

It is not just elements in a par-ticular system, for instance an energy management system, that must work together. A complete energy manage-ment service should have a system that reads the meter, ensures that unoccupied

rooms are not lit and heated unneces-sarily and that “ windows_open ” and “ room_heated ” is a mutually-exclu-sive combination. It should provide feedback of a consumer’s usage via the home’s entertainment systems and provide hints of how to save energy. It might have the ability to shut down non-essential devices in order to reduce overall energy demand.

Another example of a multi-ele-ment service is a “ well-being ” sys-tem where a caring organization may install systems that check and moni-tor the daily routine of the people in the home. Such a system may measure when and how much water is used. It may monitor, for example, when a per-son is in a particular room or when an appliance is turned on and off. It may also provide stimulating programmes, or one-to-one contact via the TV chan-nel based on the person’s needs.

This may sound invasive but many people may prefer to know that an aging relative is well, or if there is a potential health or mental prob-lem that they could pre-empt before it reaches a point where it is too late to manage proactively. Many loving sons and daughters would appreciate this service.

Telecare from home is also far less costly than housing the elder-ly and infirm in care homes. Indeed, Tunstall, the manufacturers and pro-viders of telecare products and serv-ices, estimate that enabling people to remain at home as they age costs only a very small percentage of the cost of full-time residential care.

The home may have several entertainment audiovisual devices, ranging from a TV with a simple (ter-restrial TV) digital set top box with Internet connectivity, to multiple audi-ovisual devices and PC-based systems possibly using Windows Media Cen-treTM. A common feature of all enter-tainment systems will be the use of Internet protocol, amongst other sys-tems, that they use to work with one another. They may well (regardless of the topology of the installation) have a single point for the user interface and control. It will be a major challenge to keep this simple and intuitive.

CONTENT CREATOR

END USER

CONTENT PROVIDERCONTENT AGGREGATORSERVICE CREATORSERVICE AGGREGATORSERVICE PROVIDER

NETWORK OPERATORSERVICE OPERATOR

CONTENT DISTRIBUTORSUBSCRIBER

Figure 4 – Service Supply Chain Entities (from TAHI).

“ Having broadband and Internet protocol connectivity allows

significant interactivity between all of the potential

smart services to homes and smart systems within

them.It is also understood that (Internet

protocol) TV delivered via broadband may be a competitive source of con-tent and that the freedom provided by the Internet will change the paradigm of broadcasting. Very soon it will be simple to choose an evening’s enter-tainment from a vast menu of possi-ble programmes. Anyone will have the opportunity of designing their own set of programmes provided in their own timeframe. Having broadband and Internet protocol connectivity allows significant interactivity between all of the potential smart services to homes and smart systems within them.

There are many such services that will utilize multiple systems in the home. Some are as yet not seen as


The Digital Homeessential, some have yet to be devel-

oped. But provided a service can uti-lize any device, object or network in the home, the cost of introducing new services will fall, since much of the infrastructure necessary for the serv-ice will already be in place.

Information, privacy and security

Many services will need infor-mation from the home in order to deliver an informed service to the home own-er. For instance :

1 An energy management service will collect a large number of sensor readings that will need to be collected and analysed (diag-nosed) before feedback in the form of control or customer advice can be presented.

2 A cookery or food planning serv-ice, with menus and advice will need information gathered from the food in the homes’ fridge and store cupboards (perhaps using Radio Frequency Identification tags) in order to provide the serv-ice.

3 A well-being service will require multiple sensor readings to pro-vide a sensible output.

All this data can potentially provide personal information about the home user. It is therefore essential that this information is used in ways that are beneficial to the home user (and the service is designed with safe-guards that it should be), and equally important that the home user’s privacy is safeguarded.

Functional safetyAnother significant requirement

of smart systems in the home is func-tional safety – particularly when systems interact and are controlled externally. It is all too easy to allow new systems to control existing equipment, which in itself has safety safeguards, in ways that are potentially dangerous.

It will be important to be able to understand the many interactions

between systems that can occur both in an existing system and when addi-tional elements/devices or subsystems are added.

Inherent in any management sys-tem will be the requirement to model multiple interactions autonomously ; this will apply to every home-based system created as each will be sub-tly different.

A services-interoperable open architecture ?

A number of services have been described and there are a great many more (limited only by the imagination of service providers). We know now that future services will be complex, use many subsystems, be extensible, but for many future services, we don’t yet know the combination of devices and subsystems.

We do know that many disparate devices, objects systems and networks will need to communicate and interact with one another and, that in many cas-es there will be a need to ensure qual-ity of service to defined service level specifications. In short, there will be a requirement for interoperability and an architecture that will support any serv-ice to anyone.

There are a number of require-ments for a services-interoperable open architecture that can be listed as follows :

• Future resistance : Any open archi-tecture standard must be able to work with whatever systems, services and equipment are available now or may become available in the future. It must be “ future resistant ”.

RSOobjectDESCRIPTION

REMOTE MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM

RESIDENTIALGATEWAY

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loca

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NetworkUser Interface

ServiceUser Requirement

Figure 5 – Remote Service Object (its information may be abstracted)

PSARSO

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ABSTRACTED REQUIREMENTS

ON OBJECT(S)

SERVICEREQUIREMENTS

CONDITIONS OFOPERATION

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Supply Chain EntityEquipment

NetworkUser Interface

ServiceUser Requirement

Figure 6 – Pervasive Service Agent (also abstracted)


Main Focus

• Interoperability : Any open archi-tecture standard cannot displace existing systems and networks. It must work with them. It is highly unlikely that systems, initiatives and equipment will simply change to an “ unbiased ” open architec-ture. It must support all aspects of interoperability.

• Adaptability : Any standard open architecture must have mecha-nisms and methods for adapting to the existing infrastructure. A set of application programming interfac-es (APIs) between the existing and universal architecture is required.

• Taxonomy : Since new services are likely to be constructed using the components of any existing sys-tem or network, there must be a common way of describing com-ponents regardless of the underly-ing system they reside in.

• Portability : An open architecture must allow a person to move home, taking equipment and systems to the new home. It will be necessary for equipment and systems to be plugged in and work just as well in the new home even if the exter-nal and internal communications infrastructure in the new home is entirely different.

• Serviceability : For any service, there must be a method of ensur-ing the Service Level Specification (SLS)/Service Level Agreement (SLA)/quality of service (QoS) is obtained and maintained. Service-ability includes prioritization, reli-ability, safety and security.

• Ubiquity : A services-interoperable open architecture must be holistic and operate from service provider to end user. It must provide visi-bility, understanding and manage-ment of the whole service and all its elements.

• Manageability : Any service, sys-tem, application or network will require management.

a) In some cases the service applica-tion will be largely autonomous and self-contained and its only

external activity will be initia-tion and the reporting of par-ticular programmed events.

b) Where the service application utilizes more than one subsys-tem, the point of control will be remote from many of the action elements employed ; control may reside in a remote management system or “ proxied ” to a “ res-idential gateway ”.

c) Where the feedback loop of a service utilizes systems that must be provided externally – say through an (Internet proto-col) TV channel, then much of the service will require remote monitoring, diagnosis or con-trol.

It is therefore a property of any open architecture that its manage-ment functions can placed anywhere and that this makes no difference to its operation.

About the authorStephen Pattenden has been involved in systems collect-ing information in the home since 1994 when he was engaged in developing systems for AMR. Since

then he has been active in standards to do with home systems and has recently edited the CENELEC SmartHouse Code of Practice. Mr. Pattenden serves on the UK panel that follows home systems standards in the UK, is responsible for running the Secretariat of The Application Home Initiative (TAHI) and is secretary for SHSSG. His consultancy company Telemetry Associates was created in 1998.

Links : Telemetry Associateswww.telemetra.com TAHI www.theapplicationhome.comCENELEC www.cenelec.orgSHSSG www.ictsb.org/SHSSG_home.htm

Sources : The section on the requirements for a services-interoperable open architec-ture draws on information that the author and others contributed for the CENELEC SmartHouse Code of Practice Annex on Interoperability.

The section on the TAHI Open Architec-ture draws on information that the author prepared for internal and external TAHI documentation on the TAHI Open Archi-tecture

The diagrams in the section on users and their needs were originally prepared by the author for a presentation on “ Accessi-bility ” given to the 2004 Accessibility Conference and subsequently modified.

Emerging from these require-ments are services that have common means of description, operation and control. The architecture will need to cover the end-to-end service sup-ply chain. The underlying infrastruc-ture and equipment can be any equip-ment that satisfies the requirement of the service, with the control residing anywhere.

Such an open architecture encourages competition in the mar-ketplace and makes “ lock in ” to a particular service or service provider more difficult.

Because an open architecture implies a standard means and method-ology for describing the service, new and innovative services can be designed that “ synergistically ” employ existing

components. Thus, service providers can deliver new and better services more economically and to the benefit of the end user.

Common ways of describing objects

So far this article has outlined some of the requirements for providing services and applications into the home. It has described the need for taking a

“ Each smart house may have an average of 500 objects which will be

communicating information to management systems possibly 20 times per day

on average.”


http://www.ictsb.org/SHSSG_home.htm

The Digital Homeholistic approach to the whole sector.

One thing that is certain is that most standards work, while addressing many of the areas of this sector, is not taking a holistic approach to the work.

Within ISO/IEC the main area of work in the home systems is in ISO/IEC JTC1 subcommittee SC 25, Inter-connection of information technolo-gy equipment, working group WG 1, Home electronic systems. There are two major work items of note :

The first project, headed up by IBM Watson Labs with significant international input, is working to find common ways of describing objects, regardless of their underlying physical communication layer, or the network or system in which they operate.

The work is moving towards the publication of a major draft for comment and has a very good chance of delivering the means for enabling devices (objects) in a smart home to interoperate with one another.

By the end of the current part (two), there should be a standard meth-odology for describing objects that can translate to, and from, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), Local Operating Net-work (LON) and Konnex (KNX) or any other network on which equipment may reside and that a systems integrator may wish to utilize its interoperable compo-nents. (Part three will relate to taxono-my – the description of objects).

Defining the home gateway

The other SC 25/WG 1 project of note is the definition of the home gateway. However, to some extent this is dependent on the outcome of the interoperability work.

The main problem of defining the home gateway is that its function is very dependent on the services that flow through it and which it supports. As described previously, these cov-er a wide range of services and it is always possible that service providers will want to “ own ” the gateway that supports “ their ” applications.

There is other work on network-ing, security and specific systems, but

by far, the most important is interoper-ability. Also in the home systems space are all the standards that cover cabling, wireless and Ethernet, the networks out-side the home and all the safety, secu-rity and usability standards. But these apply to equipment in the home and are the subject of many ISO and IEC com-mittees. Much of this work is also cov-ered by the World Wide Web Consor-tium (W3C), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and, of course, by the Euro-pean Standards organizations.

The Application Home Initiative

Both the Application Home Ini-tiative (TAHI) and the European Appli-cation Home Alliance (TEAHA) have proposed an open architecture that cov-ers the end-to-end service supply chain and includes in its taxonomy the serv-ice description, as well as everything as far as the end user and the user inter-face. TAHI/TEAHA propose a service

supply chain made up of generalized entities (see Figure 4, page 20).

Each entity must fulfil its part in delivering the service and conform to levels required by service. It is also recognized that for successful delivery, each entity must “ profit ” in some way from the transaction.

All the elements of the service – entities, networks, objects, devices, sub-systems and applications – are described as remote service objects (RSOs), each of which holds or declares the information necessary to monitor, diagnose, understand and control that object (as appropriate) (see Figure 5, page 21).

“ Enabling people to remain at home as they age costs only a very small percentage of the cost of full-time residential care.”


Main Focus

The service is managed by per-vasive service agents (PSAs). These have the task of monitoring, control-ling and communicating with remote service objects (RSOs) and hold the service together and make it work (see Figure 6, page 21).

The main point about the TAHI/TEAHA open architecture is that it cov-ers the whole service. It also allows modelling of services and their inter-action with other services that may be operating in parallel in the same home environment (see Figure 7, below).

The whole feedback loop and proxy of the service or application is shown in Figure 8 (opposite).

The work on open architec-ture readily acknowledges that there are many systems already at work in the home and will be designed to build links between these and its own architecture.

By extension, a services-inter-operable open architecture also allows services to share objects and thereby reduces any unnecessary duplication of resources and allows new services to be established that only require exist-ing or installed components.

One of the key components to the open architecture will be the inter-operability work of ISO/IEC JTC I/SC 25/WG 1, as this will form the taxon-omy for the open architecture and its means of interoperating with existing infrastructures.

Management and information management

No work on the delivery of serv-ices “ from well-being to entertain-ment ” can be complete without dis-cussing the issue of management. In the not-too-distant future, there will be take-up of Internet protocol-based services as described above by prob-ably 95 percent of the populations of developed countries. This is likely to result in perhaps a billion homes, each with a body of objects (sensors, appli-cations and devices), working (hope-fully) interoperably together.

Each smart house may have an average of 500 objects each of which will be communicating information to management systems possibly 20 times per day on average. Although in many cases the amount of each data

item will be small (perhaps only 1Kb), the total body of information will be huge, and the process of divining use-ful information from this mass of data will be seriously non-trivial.

In order to make systems work most efficiently, to save energy and resources and to keep us well in our homes, the level of processing required will be massive. Furthermore, each complex home system (and they all will be) cannot call on its own resi-dent information and communications technology engineer.

We need to develop massive-ly parallel autonomous management systems that will manage home sys-tems, diagnose and resolve problems, and only refer intractable problems to human intervention.

A first step towards these sys-tems is a standard services-interoper-able open architecture and standard-ized taxonomy to describe this new world of mixed information and pro-

object

object

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object

SET OF INTERACTING OBJECTS COMPRISING A SERVICE

RSO

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ABSTRACTED SET OF RSOs REPRESENTING THE SERVICE

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Figure 7 – Shows the abstraction of the objects and system, providing a service to some remote system.

© I

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The Digital Home

SERVICE PROVIDER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

RSO

RSORSO

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SET OF INTERACTING OBJECTS COMPRISING A SERVICE

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Figure 8 – Service abstracted to a remote system but proxied back to a RG – in the remote system the service components can be analysed, monitored and diagnosed.

vide a unified way of describing smart home systems.

Again, work has been done in many areas to make sense of this sort of complexity by organizations such as Autonomy, Google, Oracle and SAP in areas such as services-oriented appli-cations, but so far has not addressed the home services sector. There has been work on providing predictive responses to the installation of (say) ADSL systems and the monitoring and predictive diagnosis of failure in home appliances, and similar methods are used in relationship management by large retailers to predict user pur-chase needs.

Taken together, there is proba-bly plenty of expertise to start resolv-ing one of the major information prob-lems of our time.

Understanding the opportunities

We are standing on the cusp of a whole range of new services to peo-ple in their homes. These range from well-being to entertainment and take in security and energy management.

There are many more services that fast Internet protocol connectivity with the home can deliver and we have not even begun to imagine the rich diver-sity of new and beneficial services the future will bring.

“ We are standing on the cusp of a whole range

of new services to people in their homes.”

We must understand the opportu-nities of the immense amount of infor-mation that will become available, and find standardized ways to look after it, and use it beneficially in ways that pre-serve our privacy and security.

There is much standards work to be done and essentially it must be carried out internationally. This is a major task for ISO/IEC to pull together the multiple strands of standardization into a cohesive interoperable services architecture and make any service for anyone possible.

However, while there are plenty of standards and other work in progress now, especially in ISO/IEC JTC I/SC 25/WG 1 and by the European Stand-ards organizations, there is much to do yet (not least because the neces-sary services open architecture cuts across multiple standards groups that tend to only “ look at ” and understand their own areas of interest).

We must agree and standard-ize an open architecture and interop-erability that will allow services to work together and enable autonomous management to the benefit of people everywhere.

© I

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Main Focus

Home sweet homeWhen integration becomes a reality

by Dr. Kenneth Wacks, Convener of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 1, Home Electronic System

Manufacturers of appliances and consumer electronics are constantly seeking new

products that can command higher margins in a very competitive market. These manufacturers are investigating product opportunities in home systems that enable new consumer features by interconnecting appliances, sensors, and control panels.

The home systems industry has been developing since the mid-1980s. Until then hobbyists had been jury-rigging remote controls for vari-ous home applications such as light-ing and entertainment. This industry is now emerging as a major market segment for appliances and consum-er electronics makers. The business

objective of home systems is to offer consumers new products and services to enjoy at home.

The hallmark of this industry segment is the transition from stand-alone appliances to systems made pos-sible by a home network. The home network enables the communications of commands, control, data, audio, and video among devices via wires or wirelessly.

About a billion dollars has been invested in creating networking tech-nologies and components for home systems.

Sleeping soundly at night

Our homes are replete with devices that improve the operation of the house and make life more conven-ient, productive, and safer. These devic-es range from large appliances in the kitchen and utility room, to entertain-ment products and an endless array of small appliances throughout the house. In addition, we have sensors and con-trol devices for lighting, heating and cooling, and security. Each device or group of devices is independent of the others.

Consider your routine before retiring at night :

• Adjust the thermostat for comfort and conservation,

• Make sure the range, oven, and coffee maker are off,

• Turn off most lights,

• Shut the TV, radio, and stereo,

• Secure the door locks,

• Set the alarm clock for wake up.

12:35

External Services

Entertainment

Appliances

Computers

Heating and Cooling

Security

Lighting

ResidentialGateway

Figure 1 – A network of home appliances

-1-

Figure 1 – A network of home appliances.

© I

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The Digital HomeIt certainly would be convenient

to have a single ‘good night’ switch that initiated the same routine. A few high-end home systems on the market offer similar features. The manufactur-ers accomplish this integration usual-ly with a proprietary network and pro-prietary interfaces to the device under control. A mass market will develop only when appliances and components can be interconnected and can interop-erate with low-cost technology.

At the click of a buttonA home network provides an

electronic pathway among appliances, sensors, controllers, and user interfac-es. Figure 2 shows how kitchen appli-ances connect to a home network. Each appliance is fitted with an electronic module called a “ network interface ” that connects it to the home network. This slide shows the network interface that is actually a small electronic cir-cuit inside the refrigerator.

Home appliances are operated with a variety of buttons, knobs, and keys on each appliance. Furthermore, control methods and panel layouts are usually different for each appliance. With a home system, for example, we might control our house from special switches on the wall ; one switch might turn on all the lights, while anoth-er switch turns on music. We might manage the house from control panels installed on the wall near the entrance to each room, or we might use a port-able computer or mobile telephone to control appliances – no matter where we are or what we’re doing at the time. It’s no longer a utopian idea that just before leaving work to go home, for example, a quick call to the house might start getting dinner ready and/or make the indoor temperature com-fortable for our arrival home.

Making networks work together

While dozens of home network communications schemes have been developed, many of these networks will not work together. This poses chal-lenges for manufacturers who want to sell the same products in each country and benefit from economies of scale. It is better to use the same network design and to develop different appli-ance designs. That is why ISO and IEC created working group WG 1, Home Electronic System (HES), of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Interconnection of infor-mation technology equipment.

The WG 1, Home Electronic System comprises a set of standards that span a variety of topics related to home systems :

HES architectureOne of the first projects of the

HES working group was the creation of a generic home network architecture. This specification was completed and published more than five years ago as a series of technical reports (ISO/IEC TR 14543, Home Electronic System architecture.) The architecture doc-ument is being expanded to include

Boiler

Appliance Network

NetworkInterface

12:35

Range DishWasher

ClothesWasher

Freezer

Refrigerator

ResidentialGateway

To externalservice provider

Figure 2 – Connecting appliances to a home network

-3-

Figure 2 – Connecting appliances to a home network.

In the future, as we buy prod-ucts for our house, we will connect them to our home network, as illustrat-ed in Figure 1. Here we see an exam-ple of a home network organized into sections, each supporting a cluster of related appliances :

• Entertainment : TV and radios,

• Environmental comfort : heating and cooling,

• Lighting,

• Kitchen appliances,

• Computers,

• Home security and access control.

All these clusters of appliances may be operated from a control panel shown in the middle of Figure 1. The control panel connects to the Internet via a Residential Gateway. The Resi-dential Gateway brings in cable televi-sion, DSL (data services via telephone lines), satellite video and audio, and enables Internet access.

With a home network installed and then connected to the Internet, we will be able to buy services from companies that might provide us with music, video, and games. Appliance companies might check that our kitch-en appliances are working properly and will be able to find problems ear-ly before the appliance breaks.

“ The standards should help manufacturers to

ensure connectivity and interoperability among appliances and control

devices.”


Main Focus

communications protocol standards from various regions in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Networked appliance safetyISO/IEC TR 14762, Guidelines

for functional safety, was published at the request of the IEC Advisory Com-mittee on Safety (ACOS). Issues of safe-ty become challenging when applianc-es may be controlled from outside the house via a pathway that may include a remote computer, a telephone, the Internet, a residential gateway, a home network, and an appliance interface. A failure at any point could impair appli-ance safety and endanger users.

Integrated cabling for home networks

More than half of new homes in some countries are being wired with home networks, initially to support broadband Internet access from mul-tiple locations in the house. Home sys-tems applications can share this wir-ing. A joint project team composed of WG 1 and WG 3, Customer premises cabling, were formed to develop ISO/IEC 15018, Generic cabling system for homes, and to establish standards for

About the authorKenneth Wacks has been the Convener of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 1 since 1997. He is a pioneer in establishing the home systems industry and is a

management advisor to clients worldwide (www.kenwacks.com). He advises manufacturers and utilities on business opportunities, network alternatives, and product development in home and building systems. Dr. Wacks received his PhD in communications from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Hertz Fellow and studied at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

features in hardware and software. A firewall limits what types of messag-es can flow into and out of the house to ensure privacy. Firewall provisions in the gateway enforce agreements between service providers and resi-dents as to access rights and access times. As an example, if an occupant allows monthly meter readings, the firewall could preclude the utility from daily readings. Also, the gateway optionally may be configured to block commands that could place an appli-ance in an unsafe mode. For example, turning on a cook top from a remote location might be prohibited.

The HomeGate physical device may be one box or multiple boxes, possibly interconnected. A general-purpose gateway may include plug-in cards, illustrated in Figure 5. This would permit adaptations for various Wide Area Networks. Options include signaling via cable TV, satellite, digit-al telephone techniques (DSL), broad-band over power line, and wireless. On the house side, cards are shown for a choice of home networks. To promote interoperability, HomeGate will also accommodate optional interconnec-tions among various local area net-work protocols.

home wiring. This generic cabling sup-ports applications ranging from home control to data to audio and video.

Figure 3 contains photographs from a recent installation of structured wiring in a new apartment building. The yellow wires carry computer and appli-ance data. The blue wires are coaxial cables for TV distribution.

The residential gatewayThe growth and pervasiveness

of the Internet have created opportuni-ties for new home services enabled by connecting a home network to outside service providers via the Internet. This network connection is made possible by the residential gateway. The multi-part standard under the general title, ISO/IEC 15045, Information technol-ogy – Home Electronic System (HES) gateway, is being prepared for the res-idential gateway, informally known as the HomeGate.

The primary responsibility of the gateway, as shown in Figure 4, is to translate digital messages and data between the communications format outside the house and the format used by the home network. In addition to the translation feature of a communi-cations gateway, HomeGate includes requirements for privacy, security, and safety via the incorporation of firewall

Figure 3 – Structured wiring installation.


The Digital HomeProduct interoperability

Rules for interoperability are essential because we are creating an inte-grated set of functions from devices that may be produced by multiple manufac-turers. The first and most important deci-sion is what is the application and how will the various components and appli-ances cooperate to serve the user.

Figure 4 – Residential gateway.

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LAN = Local Area Network

Application Domain ControllersLAN Adaptors

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Cable Card

Power Line Card

Radio Card

WiFi Card

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Inte

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Figure 5 – Residential gateway example.

AccessNetwork

Telephone Line

Power Line

IEEE 1394

BackboneNetworkHub

AccessNetwork

Figure 6 – Application of Backbone Network standard

-7-

Figure 6 – Application of Backbone Network standard.

been published as technical reports (ISO/IEC TR 15067).

Backbone and Component Networks

The Backbone and Component Network Interfaces, ISO/IEC 20587, currently under development, is to inter-connect a variety of disparate home net-works, called Component Networks, via interfaces to a common network, known as a Backbone Network. The Backbone Network supports all classes of appli-cations from command and control up to streaming data for audio/video (A/V) using wires and non-wired media to carry the application signals from the Component Networks. Figure 6 illus-trates a possible application of this stand-ard, including links to external service providers.

Home Electronic System securityThe proposed Home Electronic

System (HES) security standard, ISO/IEC 24767, addresses security between an external network from a service pro-vider and a home network, and securi-ty within a home network. This stand-ard defines the Secure Communication Middleware Protocol (SCMP) to sup-port internal security services of home networks.

The ultimate goal – the integrated home

For home systems to function, the network and the connected appli-ances must all work together. Inte-gration is the promise of a home net-work, but the reality is that each appli-ance operates separately and differ-ently from each other appliance. The standards of SC 25/WG 1 should help manufacturers to ensure connectivity and interoperability among applianc-es and control devices to enable new home services. The ultimate goal of an integrated home system is the elec-tronic equivalent of a staff of servants at our beck and call, all the time, at a price we can afford.

A multi-part standard, ISO/IEC 18012, Guidelines for product inter-operability, is being developed with the goal of providing seamless appli-cations among products designed for a variety of incompatible networks car-rying incompatible commands and con-trol signals. This standard overcomes these obstacles with models for com-mon applications and representation of commands in an XML-based syn-tax that is independent of any particu-lar communications protocol. Most of the application models to be incorpo-rated into this standard have already

“ The business objective of home systems is to offer consumers new products

and services to enjoy at home.”


Main Focus

ISO, IEC and ITU aim at a consistent set of standards for home networking

by Walter P. von Pattay, Secretary of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Interconnection of information technology equipment

In the early 1980s, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) recognized that technologies devel-

oped for data processing were increas-ingly used more generally in the elec-trotechnical field. As a result of their foresight, IEC created technical com-mittee IEC/TC 83, Information tech-nology equipment, with a German Sec-retariat and Canadian Chair.

In 1997 ISO and the IEC merged three technical committees to form the joint ISO/IEC technical committee JTC 1, Information technology, and IEC/TC 83 became JTC 1/SC 25, Intercon-nection of information technology equip-ment. In time, SC 25 was also trusted with the work of subcommittees 13 and 26.

In 1983, the technical work of SC 25 had started with working group WG 1, Home electronic systems, con-vened by the USA1). With this head start, SC 25 guided the market with its first publications. Only later, however, did national standards committees and consortia take the lead for a number of aspects of the intelligent home.

Whether the faster progress of other bodies is due to the more homog-enous interests of the experts in these bodies or the mixture of experts in SC 25/WG 1 – with some interested in the process and others interested in the results of the process : standards that influence products and services for the market – is still open to debate.

Lack of harmonization hampers business

Today, this highly topical subject is called the ‘intelligent home’. We see that the incompatibilities between the specifications developed on national/regional levels, as well as by consortia, hamper business. The extent of this has led developers of these specifications to require interoperability supported by international standards.

SC 25 recently intensified its effort to respond to this require-ment 2). It is expected that the experi-ence gained by this subcommittee in other standardization projects that suc-cessfully support committees in charge

Figure 1 – Cooperation or competition is a question of chance and probably of persons acting.

ISO/IEC JTC 1

IEC TC 100 ITU-TRadio, TV

Data storage compression, presentation

Digital Networks

MULTIMEDIA

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International Telecommunications Union

Information Technology

Will the standards grow together consistently and without overlap?

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The Digital Homeof applications 3) will help provide a

consistent set of standards for intel-ligent homes.

As a system committee that focuses on interconnection, SC 25 approaches the problem in a way that is impartial to the interests of the many industries involved. Presently, different industries, their standards committees and consortia try to overcome the short-comings of their members in relation to providing an “ intelligent home ”, by widening their scopes and putting their traditional products into the cen-tre of the “ intelligent home ” as seen by their industry (see Figure 1).

es and future proof solutions. (Experi-ence with complex networked systems shows that they may establish the crit-ical mass needed for a self-contained growth within 15 years, provided there is planning confidence. Without it, this process may not only be pro-longed by about 10 years, it may be aborted because of the emergence of subsequent and more advanced tech-nologies. 4))

It should also be noted that net-work requirements are very different for the varying kinds of information, whether they cross the network in ana-logue or digital form (see Figure 2).

An enabler of communications

Although these differences are not so obvious on the surface, SC 25 takes them into account in its network-ing solutions, and puts the network at the centre (see Figure 3 overleaf). This network will serve all industries that bring their products and services into the home through different sales chan-nels. As soon as these products have arrived in the home they will be able to communicate across the border lines

of industries, may share resources and be used by multiple applications within the home. By providing specifications for the network that may reach up to layer 7 of the Open Systems Intercon-nection (OSI) reference model – and that makes use of standards developed by others – SC 25 sees itself as an ena-bler of communications for industries connected and a broker for their some-times competing interests.

In 1984, IEC/TC 83 started work on LANs that was later moved to JTC 1/SC 6, Telecommunications and information exchange between systems.

Figure 2 – Kinds of information differ in requirements.

By doing so, they create overlaps and incompatibilities with neighbouring industries and unsettle the user, who looks for planning confidence, seam-less communications, shared resourc-

“ Without international standardization,

incompatibilities between specifications developed on national and regional levels

hamper business.”

1) Wacks contribution.

2) Kaijser contribution.

3) Flatman contribution ; Gilmore contribution.

4) v. Pattay, Walter : Die technologischen Ursachen für die wachsende Bedeutung internationaler Normung und die ordnungspolitischen Herausforderungen für ihre Durchsetzung in der Telekommunikation. expert verlag, Malmsheim, 1994. ISBN 3-8169-3990-2.


Source / Sink Bandwidth/bit rate Acceptable latency

Acceptable latency differences

Acceptable bit error rate

Coding

Data Human Application kbit/s to Gbit/s High High Low Location driven

Text Human Human 50 bit/s to 100 kbit/s

Very high Very high Medium History driven

Voice Human Human 56/64 kbit/s low Very low High Human driven

Audio Instruments Human 9 kHz to 25 kHz

Very high Very low High Quality driven

Video Instruments Human 8 MHz or 8 Mbit/s

Very high Very low High Region driven

Graphic Program Human Some kbit/s High High Medium Algorithm driven

Control/ Command

Machine Machine < bit/s to kbit/s Very low Very low Very low Industry driven

Main Focus

Working group 3, Customer premises cabling, was created in 1988 and convened by Germany. This com-mittee developed ISO/IEC 11801, Infor-mation technology – Generic cabling for customer premises. Over the last decade, very few offices built are not cabled according to this standard, whose principles, in the meantime, have also been used for the cabling of homes, and will soon be used for industrial premises and data centres as well.

The secret of this standard’s suc-cess lies in its “ black box ” approach 5) which :

• is combined with a reference imple-mentation,

• provides the application with guar-anteed performance of transmission channels,

• provides committees developing cable and connecting hardware (known as component committees) with challenging minimum require-ments for components required in large quantities – developed in close contact with these commit-tees 6), and

• provides freedom of implementa-tion with respect to channel length and component design (as long as the channel performance is met).

In addition, minimum perform-ance for cable and connecting hard-ware may be met in any way the sup-plier finds appropriate.

Acting as a broker and interpreter between committees

The cabling standard is an excel-lent example of the success of a sys-tems committee that acts as a broker and interpreter between committees : the committees in charge of componets provide specifications for components, subsystems, like cords, and test methods needed to implement and test cabling systems on the one hand and the com-mittees that specify applications using that cabling system on the other.

Specifying a cabling system, the committee JTC 1/SC 25 is a cus-tomer to components committees and a supplier to application committees and end-users. The key to success is fairness to suppliers and customers. Other important factors include timely decisions and the readiness to choose between options if the market requires clear guidance.

Digital Network (ISDN). There were other options better prepared for high-er frequencies and carrying currents to communication devices.

Yet, SC 25 saw the danger of splitting the market should it choose another mating interface for the tel-ecommunications outlet of generic cabling, and stuck to this “ wrong ” decision taken by another committee for its own standard.

5) “ Black box appraoch ” refers to the total freedom that the standard provides for the implementation of transmission channels.

6) Weking contribution.

7) High-performance parallel interface is a computer bus for the attachment of high speed storage devices to supercomputers.

8) Intelligent Peripheral Interface is a hard drive interface.

9) Small computer system interface is a parallel interface standard used for attaching peripheral devices to computers.

10) A serial data transfer architecture developed for mass storage device and other peripheral devices that require very high bandwidth.

11) RapidIO architecture defines a high-performance, packet-switched, interconnect technology designed for passing data and control information between microprocessors, communication and network processors, system memory, and peripheral devices within a system.

It should be noted that often the wrong decision taken at the right time can be more helpful than the right deci-sion taken too late. It was against the advice of IEC/TC 83 that the mating interface of the connector according to IEC 60603-7, Connectors for frequen-cies below 3 MHz for use with print-ed boards – Part 7 : Detail specifica-tion for connectors, 8-way, including fixed and free connectors with common mating features, with assessed quality, was specified for Integrated Services

“ Standards developed by the subcommittee for the commercial market are getting access to the home market.”

Figure 3 – Networked homes connect internal and external entities.

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The Digital HomeMeanwhile, the connector

designed for cheap termination of flat cables and frequencies below 3 megahertz is being specified for up to 500 megahertz. The cabling stand-ard has focused the industry’s devel-opment on one mating interface that now provides a performance level that was never expected.

In other cases, SC 25 was able to convey the market requirements to its suppliers in a way that led them to their highly attractive developments, like the test methods for copper cabling that could be implemented in hand-held testers.

There were also cases where the potential suppliers of SC 25 did not respond fast enough. In such cases, SC 25 does its best to provide its customers with an interim answer at least.

From the commercial market to the home market

Based on the experience with office cabling, ISO/IEC 15018:2002, Generic cabling for homes, specifies a generic cabling system that supports all kinds of applications from very low speed commands and controls appli-cations through medium speed infor-mation and communications technol-ogies to high-speed multimedia and television.

Such cabling systems may be installed very efficiently when homes are built and refurbished, but it will take many years to precable a signifi-cant portion of homes.

Wireless solutions therefore will play a major role in bringing intelligence to existing homes, while in the future precabled homes will save the scarce resources of the wireless spectrum for communication to moving objects.

At the same time applications are already being prepared to exploit new options of the cabling infrastruc-ture : IEC/TC 100, Audio, video and multimedia systems and equipment, considers the use of balanced cables (often called twisted pairs) to bring the information directly to their tel-evision set.

Working group 4, Interconnec-tion of computer systems and attached equipment, (originally convened by Ger-many, later by the USA) whose focus is in the commercial world, also con-tributes to the intelligent home.

Peripheral interfaces like HIP-PI 7), IPI 8), SCSI 9), Fibre Channel 10), and RapidIO11) are widely used in the computer industry and some find their way to the home, once installed in personal computers. The same stor-age devices are used for commercial data and private information, such as for photos. ISO/IEC 24775, Informa-tion technology, storage management, currently being considered, is expected to be quoted by applications ranging from data via music to video.

Principles and solutions devel-oped by SC 25 for the commercial market are increasingly being used to develop standards for the home market. The same happens when SC 25 quotes standards from the commercial area in specifications for the intelligent home.

About the authorDr.-Ing. Walter P. von Pattay is Secretary of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Com-mittee JTC 1, Information technology, SC 25, Interconnec-tion of informa-tion technology

equipment, and Convenor of JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3, Customer premises cabling.He received his degree in Electrical Engi-neering at the Technical University Munich in 1965 and a PhD at the Univer-sity of Bremen in 1993. At Siemens, he was heavily involved in the areas of non-voice communications and networking, covering aspects includ-ing systems design, regulation and stand-ardization. When he retired from Siemens as deputy director in 2003, he was spon-sored by the German Electrical and Elec-tronic Manufacturers Association (ZVEI) to continue his work in standardization.In 2002, Dr. von Pattay was awarded the Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) “ Benefit of Standardization ” prize.

Security standards published by JTC 1/SC 27, IT security techniques, are an example of the latter.

Addressing inconsistent and competing standards

At its last meeting in Novem-ber 2005, ISO/IEC JTC 1 highlight-ed a danger of developing inconsist-ent and competing standards in the area of home networking that would be against the interest of users and the industry.

JTC 1 therefore instructed SC 25 to intensify its cooperation with the standardization bodies and relevant consortia involved in home network-ing and to accelerate (within its scope) the development of a consistent set of standards for home networking, with the aim of responding to the require-ments of all interested parties.

Thus, SC 25 has begun to inten-sify its cooperation with potential users and contributors to home network-ing, have its working groups pursue appropriate projects with high prior-ity and consider setting up an addi-tional project team.

During these preparations it was found that the convergence of net-works – the mutual exploitation and use of the generic cabling infrastruc-ture specified in ISO/IEC 11801, Infor-mation technology – Generic cabling for customer premises, and ISO/IEC 15018, Generic cabling for homes, by multiple industries – would be bene-ficial to the commercial market, and would be essential for developing the home market.

Therefore, the setup of a project team on this subject is being proposed to SC 25 members.


Main Focus

Cooperation for the next generation of cabling standards

by Alan Flatman, UK representative on ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Interconnection of information technology equipment, WG 3, Customer premises cabling

F or 18 years, ISO and the Inter-national Electrotechnical Com-mission (IEC) joint technical

committee ISO/IEC JTC1, Informa-tion technology, subcommittee SC 25, Interconnection of information technol-ogy equipment, working group WG 3, Customer premises cabling, has been supporting IT applications.

The majority of applications supported by ISO/IEC cabling standards are created by the Institute of Electri-cal and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) committee 802, which is responsible for local area networks (LANs).

This committee is arguably the biggest, single customer of JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3. As liaison officer, I have had to ensure that the dialogue between these two groups has facilitated com-patible and timely standards.

IEEE 802 has over 20 different working groups and some 1 500 people attend their meetings held every four months. The committee also works closely with another ISO/IEC JTC 1 subcommittee – SC 6, Telecommu-nications and information exchange between systems.

The main point of contact for SC 25/WG 3 is the Ethernet1) group, IEEE 802.3. Several groups work on wireless networks and have an asso-ciation with SC 25/WG 3 for wire-less access point cabling. Some of the working groups are inactive, follow-ing the obsolescence of their stand-ards, such as Token Ring, Token Bus and Demand Priority.

Life expectation of cabling standards

There are a number of impor-tant differences between SC 25/WG 3 and IEEE 802.3, CSMA/CD (Ether-net). One of the most significant, being the life expectation of their respective standards. SC 25/WG 3 creates spec-ifications for the design and imple-mentation of generic cabling (often referred to as “ structured cabling ”). In order to provide a measure of sta-bility within the customer premises, the life expectancy of generic cabling is defined as “ at least 10 years ”. The prime life expectancy of a LAN prod-uct can be less than five years, which means that cabling engineers need to plan their future designs with the vision of supporting at least two gen-erations of LAN technology. This can be tough, however guidance is often provided on technological develop-ments from both sides.

Ethernet standards have always capitalized on installed cabling, and new specifications have generally been modelled on the largest avail-able base of installed, high-perform-ance cabling. Herein lays a commer-cial dilemma. LAN equipment suppli-ers want to maximize their profits from products that re-use installed cabling, while cabling suppliers focus on their latest products and generally have no interest in the LAN business.

Cabling performance growth rates

If we explore the growth rate in performance for LAN electronics and cabling, we get two very differ-ent answers. Digital information rates of electronic equipment have grown

1) Ethernet is a frame-based computer networking technology for local area networks (LANs).

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The Digital Homeaccording to Moore’s Law (after Dr

Gordon Moore, CEO of Intel) which states that silicon speeds double eve-ry 18 months.

A system supporting 10 Mbit/s Ethernet over balanced copper cabling, known as 10BASE-T, emerged in 1991. This has been overtaken by 100 Mbit/s and 1000 Mbit/s Ethernet, with a 10 Gbit/s version (10GBASE-T) expect-ed in mid-2006. Moore’s Law is there-fore an accurate indicator. The growth rate in cabling performance has not been as rapid.

If we examine trends in balanced copper cabling and chart the progress of channel bandwidth, we observe an evolution from 16 MHz in 1985 (Category 3/Class C cabling) to 500 MHz in 2006 (Category 6A/Class EA cabling). For cabling, bandwidth only doubles every four years ! Unscreened cabling has been selected to simpli-fy this comparison, and the choice of bandwidth for cabling is also some-what arbitrary. Significant perform-ance improvements may be gained with screened cabling, due to reduced levels of electromagnetic noise injec-tion, however the electronics must be able to process much smaller signals in order to exploit this advantage. Gener-al improvements in optical fibre tech-nology have been no greater than for balanced copper cabling.

Engineering breakthrough : the digital approach

Use of sophisticated Digital Sig-nal Processing (DSP) techniques has enabled LAN electronics to cancel large amounts of transmission impairments inherent in both balanced copper and optical fibre cabling systems. Smart modulation codes and bit error correc-tion technology also enable design-ers to squeeze more digital informa-tion out of the cabling. This design approach is now commonplace and has enabled the rapid pace in digital information rates to continue. Today’s LAN electronics is therefore able to exploit previously unused regions of performance in cabling transmission characteristics. This was certainly a breakthrough in engineering terms but was also a breakthrough in the relationship between IEEE 802.3 and SC 25/WG 3. For many years, SC 25/WG 3 had taken the lead in defining the best cabling technology available. IEEE 802 applications simply used this cabling as it got deployed in commer-cial buildings around the world. This role has reversed to some extent, and IEEE 802.3 is now actively driving the standardization activities within SC 25/WG 3.

Characterizing cabling specifications

IEEE 802.3 has formally indi-cated to SC 25/WG 3 that future IT cabling specifications need to be char-acterized beyond the traditional limits (for example, when signal noise cou-pled from adjacent cable pairs exceeds the insertion loss of the cabling). This is to facilitate future use of DSP tech-niques. As digital information rates grow and new transmission meth-ods emerge, the need to characterize cabling more comprehensively will increase. New cabling parameters are still emerging and we need more strin-gent control of some existing param-eters too. Standardization of cabling systems has become a very exacting business.

About the authorAlan Flatman represents the United Kingdom at ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3. He is an active contribu-tor to IEEE 802.3 and the liaison officer between the

groups. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and industry specialist in cabling and LANs. With 25 years experi-ence in the electronics and computer industries, he has advised on network technology and strategy since 1980.

“ Close cooperation between ISO and the

IEEE is vital for the next generation of cabling

standards.”

As IEEE 802.3 puts the final touches to its latest standard for 10 Gbit/s Ethernet over balanced copper cabling, SC 25/WG 3 is locked in an intimate dialogue to ensure that its next generation cabling standards take full account of these latest developments. This could not have been accomplished without close cooperation between the two groups in question.

Of course, cooperation does not end with IEEE 802. As SC 25/WG 3 is responsible for the standardization of complete cabling systems, it also needs to cooperate with components groups within IEC. The definition of cable and connectors is a critical aspect of the total cabling solution, and close liaison with copper and optical fibre component groups will also involve some of the interactive dialogue ini-tiated by SC 25/WG 3’s main custom-er, IEEE 802.3. This requires careful project management and has, overall, been a great success.

SC 25/WG 3 also creates cabling standards to support non-classical IT applications, such as audio, video and building controls (e.g. heating, light-ing, security sensors). These are rela-tively new markets, however I expect that the model of cooperation devel-oped for IEEE 802 and the cabling component groups will apply.

For more information see : www.ieee802.org


Main Focus

Deconstructing cabling construction in industrial premises

by Mike Gilmore, Convenor of the Industrial Premises Task Group and Cabling Implementation Task Group within ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 25/ WG 3, Customer premises cabling

Generic cabling can be broadly described as cabling capable of supporting a wide range of

applications (networks). Although the applications are universal, cabling has to reflect historic preferences, regula-tions and legislation of all those nations involved. The resulting standards have to be an amalgamation of existing prac-tices coupled with the technical aspi-rations of multiple regions – including those countries for whom no regional standards body exists.

The standards development work of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Inter-connection of information technolo-gy equipment, working group WG 3, Customer premises cabling, is a com-plex one, involving close association with component committees for the development of cable and connecting hardware standards, and direct liaison with applications standards commit-tees. The objective is to ensure that the cabling constructed from those com-ponents is able to support the commu-nications between the interconnected equipment.

Generic cabling for commercial buildings

The primary regional actors in the area of generic cabling are Europe and the USA. Over the past fifteen years, each region and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25 has, in turn, built upon the work of the others.

ISO/IEC 11801, Information technology – Generic cabling for customer premises, is the primary generic cabling standard for commer-cial buildings. Its publication provid-

ed the first truly generic, structured, cabling design standard by incorpo-rating the early concepts for the spec-ification of transmission characteris-tics for installed cabling. These con-cepts were also included in the stand-ard developed jointly by the Ameri-can National Standards Institute, the Telecommunications Industry Asso-ciation, and the Electronic Industries Alliance (ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A), as well as in the standard developed by the European Committee for Stand-ardization (EN 50173).

The concepts contained in the second edition of ISO/IEC 11801 : 2002 were also incorporated within the revisions of the above mentioned standards.

Recognizing environmental conditions

In 2002, two separate region-al activities were underway to extend the concept of generic cabling into industrial premises to support not only information and communication (ICT) applications but also those for indus-

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The Digital Hometrial automation, process control and

monitoring applications. In the USA work focussed on

adding new components, such as plas-tic optical fibres, to the structures of their commercial premises standard ; while in Europe, the demand for new cabling structures and configurations within the industrial domain was also considered. Both regions recognized, however, that the environmental condi-tions within industrial premises could be significantly more extreme than in office/commercial premises.

About the authorMike Gilmore, Senior Partner of The Cabling Partnership, is involved at the highest level in the United King-dom and in European and international standardization

of telecommunications cabling. He is Chair of the United Kingdom technical committee TCT/7 : Telecommunication – Installation Requirements, Convenor of CENELEC TC 215 working group 1 (its European partner), and Convenor of both the Industrial Premises Task Group and the Cabling Implementation Task Group within ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 25/WG 3. Mr. Gilmore is also the technical director of the UK Fibreoptic Industry Association.

“ Proper management of harmonization and

technical agreement within multi-regional bodies has an influence well

outside its initial intended audience.”

Developing an environmental classification system

Work undertaken in Europe was submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 at its meeting in Alexandria, Virgin-ia, that resulted, inter alia, in the nam-ing of the environmental classification system – MICE (mechanical, ingress protection, climatic and chemical and electromagnetic).

the rapid development of interrelat-ed standards. Examples of this wid-er cooperation are component stand-ards that have been quickly amended to allow products to be specified in accordance with the MICE classifi-cation of the environment in which they are to be used. This, in turn, has

In Europe, a decision was made to classify the environments in which cabling was to be installed and thereby enable the selection of appropriate materi-als. Where such materials were not avail-able or too expensive, it was envisaged to use installation techniques to mitigate the more extreme environments.

A landmark decision was made to develop three standards (ISO/IEC 24702, Information technology – Gener-ic cabling – Industrial premises, EN 50173-3, Generic cabling systems - Industrial premises, and ANSI/TIA/EIA-1005, Industrial Telecommunica-tions Infrastructure Standard,) using, for the first time, a truly multi-regional development process. The close coop-eration between the three groups was targeted on the creation of a keystone foundation – the MICE classification of cabling environments.

In cooperation with ISO/IEC, the MICE concept has been amended and progressively improved in par-allel by both regional bodies. It has given other standards committees con-fidence in adopting and responding to the demands of MICE – allowing

resulted in an inner strength of the MICE concept and in a classification system that can now be used outside the industrial arena.

In Europe, the MICE classifica-tion is being applied to generic cabling in all premises including offices, homes and data centres. It is likely that the same approach also will be ultimate-ly applied in ISO/IEC. This further accentuates the effect of the symbi-otic process adopted in SC 25.

The idea of developing a com-mon “ engine ” within a more complex standard has in effect defined the future direction of the standards for ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25 and in Europe ; only time will tell whether it will have the same impact in the USA.

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Main Focus

Cooperation between system and component committees

by Gerd Weking, liaison officer to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Interconnection of information technology equipment

The focus of electronic connector standardization in the Interna-tional Electrotechnical Commis-

sion (IEC) has changed in the past years from providing standards for the gen-eral electronic market to an active role in the development of connecting solu-tions for IEC system committees.

For the IEC Standardization Management Board (SMB), cooper-ation between committees is of high importance. One of the standardization strategy objectives for 2005-2007 is to promote systems approach. The process behind this objective is that a techni-cal committee (TC) with product func-tion standardizes its products indicating their characteristics, and a TC with sys-tem function recognizes and cross-ref-erences, when applicable, to the prod-uct standards. If the requirements are not sufficient, the system TC discuss-es the need for system standardization with the product TC.

The liaison between subcommit-tee SC 25, Interconnection of information technology equipment, of Joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, and IEC SC 48B, Electronic connectors, is an excel-lent example of such fruitful cooperation between different committees.

Experts from several compo-nent committees attend the meetings of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3, Customer premises cabling, provide information and develop International Standards for components referenced in the generic cabling standards. These component committees from IEC are for :

• coax and symmetric cables ;

• electronic connectors ; and

• fibres and cables, interconnecting devices and passive components and systems and active devices.

The work of IEC SC 48B in sup-port of SC 25/WG 3 is detailed below as an example of the component com-mittee’s work.

Connectors and generic cabling

Generic cabling, defined with-in ISO/IEC 11801, primarily specifies the minimum performance of trans-mission channels that is guaranteed to the applications as well as the mating interface between fixed cabling and the equipment cord at the wall outlet. In a second step it specifies a reference implementation with specific channel and link lengths.

For this reference implementa-tion, appropriate portions of the chan-nel performance are allocated to cables and connecting hardware. Doing so, the standard specifies minimum component requirements and references appropri-ate component standards.

In case a component standard that meets or exceeds these require-ments is not available, SC 25 starts a dialogue with the responsible compo-nent committee that will then develop component specifications to meet the system requirements. At the end, a ref-erence implementation of the cabling

First generic cabling standard with IEC as its “ customer ”

ISO/IEC 24702 is not just famous for its MICE concept – it is also the first generic cabling standard devel-oped to meet the specified needs of an IEC committee. It has resulted from a liaison between SC 25 and the Inter-national Electrotechnical Commis-sion subcommittee IEC SC 65C, Dig-ital communications, responsible for Fieldbus standards for industrial auto-mation, process control and monitor-ing. The liaison is designed to ensure that the Fieldbus applications and the preferences of the various consortia were reflected in the development of the standard.

The cabling installation stand-ards being produced by IEC SC 65C contain references to the MICE con-cept – showing once again that proper management of harmonization and tech-nical agreement within multi-regional bodies has an influence well outside its initial intended audience.

The success of concepts such as CATS (“ categories ” of twisted cabling systems in terms of the data rates that they can sustain effective-ly) or MICE depends upon them being well-founded and technically sound. Their development also demands a huge amount of effort by all involved – particularly by those leading the harmonization process in the relevant regional body.

My thanks go to Bob Lounsbury from the USA and Guenther Hoerch-er from Germany in ensuring that the changes made during each iteration of the MICE system were successful-ly tracked in each regional body.

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The Digital Home

system using components meeting the relevant and referenced compo-nent standards will provide the appli-cations with full signal transmission performance.

It should be noted that the system standard also gives freedom to imple-ment channels with other components and lengths that even exceed that of the reference implementation.

Improving connector compatibility

Compatibil-ity of connectors from different sourc-es regarding high frequency perform-ance was studied and de-embedding meth-ods were annexed to the connector stand-ards.

The latest d e v e l o p m e n t s request SC 25/WG 3 to amend ISO/IEC 11081, Generic

cabling for customer premises, to sup-port 10GBaseT2) also with unshielded cabling. At the same time the Class F transmission channel that presently may only be implemented with shielded components is upgraded to 1 GHz.

This development on generic cabling is supported by SC 48B with new standardization projects for shield-ed and unshielded IEC 60603-7-x1 con-nectors up to 500 MHz that meet the category 6A of ISO/IEC 11801 require-ments and shielded IEC 61076-3-104 connector specified up to 1 GHz for category 7A.

New test methods are under prep-aration as Alien Crosstalk3), to assess the NEXT and FEXT between neigh-bouring connectors, when mounted. This characteristic gains importance with 10GBASE-T.

Generic cabling for industrial premises

In industrial premises the envi-ronmental conditions are usually harsher than in office environments but require-ments for reliable connections are at least as high as in offices.

New connector standards had to be developed with appropriate robust-ness, improved sealing and latching, appropriate termination techniques, and cable strain relieves, support-ing field installations and industrial requirements.

Most industrial IT applications are supported by only 2-pair symmet-ric cabling. Thus, the popular M12 circular connector, according to IEC 61076-2-101, Connectors for electron-ic equipment, was specified for the interface between the generic cabling of the premises and the cabling of the apparatus. It was then up-graded with a mechanical D-coding to avoid mis-mating with other Fieldbus con-nectors.

1) Shielded and unshielded for category 5, 250 MHz for shielded and unshielded for category 6 and 600 MHz for shielded category 7.

2) 10GBASE-T Ethernet is a project under preparation by IEEE 802.3 to provide 10 Gigabit/second data transmission over shielded or unshielded twisted pair cables.

3) Alien crosstalk (AXT) characterizes the signal coupling in an information technology connector/cable from a signal or power carrying connectors /cables that runs alongside.

4) IEC 60603-7-2 : 8-Way Unscreened RJ Connectors for Frequencies up to 100 MHz. (Category 5)

“ Cooperation between system and component

committees is vital to the standardization process.”

Cabling with four balanced pairs needs to be installed if all IT servic-es as supported by ISO/IEC 11801, Generic cabling for customer premis-es, shall be supported by the industrial premises cabling.

The initial consensus was that the generic Telecommunication Outlet (TO) in industrial premises shall have the same mating interface as the con-nector standardized in ISO/IEC 11801. But it was obvious that the required robustness, latching and sealing could not be achieved by unprotected office connectors, as specified in IEC 60603-7-2 4). to -7-7.

Therefore, IEC 61076-3-106, Connectors for electronic equipment – Part 3-106 : Rectangular connectors :

“ Fruitful cooperation results in a win-win

liaison.”

The selected connector for ISO/IEC 11801 was originally specified for frequencies up to 3MHz and was extended on request of SC 25 to 100 megahertz1) for symmetric signalling. A general requirement of SC 25 for all connectors was to keep compatibility between the connectors supporting dif-ferent categories, in order to at least meet the performance of the lower cat-egory when plugs and sockets of dif-ferent categories are mated.

Appropriate test methods for sig-nal integrity measurements on connec-tors like Near End Cross Talk (NEXT), Far End Cross Talk (FEXT), Insertion Loss (IL) or Return Loss (RL) were specified.


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Protective housings for use with 8-way shielded and unshielded connec-tors for frequencies up to 600 MHz for industrial environments incorporating the 60603-7 series interface, was pre-pared to specify protective housings for connectors for industrial environments incorporating the IEC 60603-7 series interface. IEC 61076-3-106 defines 10 different housings, all of which would meet the functional requirements of ISO/IEC 24702, Information technology – Generic cabling – Industrial premises. The test programme for IEC 61076-3-106 covers the MICE table (Mechanical, Ingress protection, Climatic and chemi-cal and Electromagnetic), developed for ISO/IEC 24702.

The timing was good for the preparation of these two standards, for which drafts will be circulated as final draft International Standards in May 2006.

Selecting the industrial telecommunication outlet

As mentioned above, 10 differ-ent housing interfaces where consid-ered to be appropriate for the require-ments. In order to avoid the inconven-ience we have with power plugs, only one of the mating interfaces for hous-ings could be specified as a generic TO according ISO/IEC 24702.

After lengthy discussion, it was decided that the TO should be selected in a consultation process addressed to the national committees of subcommit-tee 25 and of IEC SC 65C, Digital com-munication. This process was launched after careful preparation between JTC 1/SC 25, IEC SC 65C and SC 48B, Electronic Connectors : At the end of the consultation one of the housings of IEC 61076-3-106 received major support and is now specified in ISO/IEC 24702 for symmetrical and fibre optic cabling.

Two IEC component commit-tees, SC 86B, Fibre optic interconnect-ing devices and passive components, and SC 48B are presently developing an interface specification for the fibre optic Duplex LC connector according

About the authorGerd Weking is Chair of IEC TC 48, Electro-mechanical components and mechanical structures for electronic equip-ment and Convenor of IEC SC 48B/WG 3,

Connectors. He represents Germany in IEC SC 48B, Electronic connectors, and is liaison officer to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25.Mr. Weking is General Manager for Intel-lectual Property and International Stand-ardization of the HARTING Technology Group and has worked for more than 25 years in the connector business, with engi-neering and management positions in test-ing, development and marketing.

IEC 61754-20 Fibre optic connector interfaces - Part 20 : Type LC con-nector family, mounted in the select-ed industrial housing detailed in IEC 61076-3-106.

Fruitful cooperation results in a win-win liaison

Successful liaisons between system and component committees need to be aware of cruicial success factors, as :

• availability of experts with broad knowledge, who can access the requirements of both committees, and are willing to achieve consen-sus ;

• existence of a network with personal relationships, giving both sides the necessary information about progress and ability to carry out crucial steps in the system and component stand-ardization process ;

• clear definition from the start of the project of necessary resourc-es (time and money) for experts involved in project teams ;

• a project management that keeps within these cost limits by ensur-ing swift solutions ;

• understanding that all partners in the process benefit from mutually-agreed and timely solutions for the market, even if the adopted solu-tion was not their first choice.

Fruitful cooperation results in a win-win liaison. Experts from the component industry benefit from ear-ly involvement at a time when the per-formance requirements are defined. This allows experts from component committees to influence the system requirements in such a way that they exploit the capabilities of components technology and do not expect more from the components than they can deliver. Those involved in the proc-ess are able to create specifications around existing products or to launch the development of new products long before others.

In addition, experts from com-ponent committees benefit indirect-ly from :

• a network of experts, customers and competitors ;

• early access to future system tech-nology ; and

• early access to future regulation and legislation activities by work-ing in liaison with horizontal com-mittees, e.g. hazardous materials.

It is obvious that the success of component and system standardi-zation is only confirmed if the mar-ket adopts the standardized products and solutions.

ISO/IEC standardization is a powerful marketing argument and stand-ardized products have a better chance of being successful in the global mar-ket and achieving mass production. The power is lost if a standard is mis-used as a pure marketing tool. Up to now the systems standards developed by SC 25 and the component standards developed in dialogue with it have pro-vided fair chances for all suppliers of sophisticated products. The added val-ue they bring to applications, cabling systems and their components has achieved wide market acceptance.


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The Digital Home

How to blend the best of all regions and industries into a coherent system

by Per Kaijser, Swedish delegate in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Interconnection of information technology equipment

Homes, like cars, contain many supporting tools and entertain-ing features, which are more and

more integrated and usually accessible via an electronic system. Although tech-nically complex from the management point of view, a car is rather simple, because all its features normally come from a single vendor who has given responsibility for the systems architec-ture to experts. These features are sel-dom significantly changed during the car’s lifetime, which is comparatively

short. When the car’s use comes to an end, so do all its subsystems.

The situation is different in a home. The inhabitant or owner of the house usually is a layperson who wants to add different features to the home. If professional support is sought, this is no trivial matter, since there is no single vendor or industry that provides the whole spectrum of products for an intelligent home. Any additions should be able to function with existing equip-ment, be easy to control and be able to communicate or share resources, in order to form an intelligent home. Since a home is often a life-long investment, new inventions and models will almost certainly be added, not only once but several times.

The multi-vendor environment

Initially, many vendors found that network solutions were beneficial and started to develop appropriate specifica-tions and products. Groups of vendors soon got together, to specify the system solutions supporting their products.

This process began with indus-tries that have a tradition of offering more or less interchangeable prod-ucts, such as the industry for installa-tion equipment. Other industries were forced to follow suit, but often with-out meeting the user’s requirement for interoperability between products from different vendors.

Today, depending on the field of applications and geographical situ-ations, we have a range of house net-work solutions up to networks of full interoperability in a multi-vendor envi-ronment. The user may then acquire products from different vendors that can share the same resources, inter-operate with each other and even use the same software tools. In other cas-es, however, isolated vendor configu-rations can have problems even when you replace the product of one gener-ation with that of the next.

Vendors and users alike miss a coherent architecture that includes all types of applications that may be used for controlling the building, for home offices, life-long learn-ing, entertaining the inhabitants and helping them to avoid moving out of their home because of old age or in the event they become handicapped. In addition, users and vendors often do not believe the offered specifica-tions, or combination of specifica-tions, have a life expectancy that jus-tifies an investment.

Benefitting from International Standards

All parties involved would ben-efit from International Standards that provide a consistent set of specifica-tions to cover all areas of applications, guarantee seamless communications, share resources and provide compat-ibility in a multi-vendor environment within the home.

A coherent set of standards would not only give vendors and users the planning confidence they need, it would also boost market development

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and increase international trade and commerce in the field.

Developing these standards is a challenge for both technicians and standard managers, even though many components for such an architecture specification are already offered by international, regional and national standards, as well as consortia spec-ifications.

One problem is that these are often overlapping, segregated and incompatible. Another is that prod-ucts and services coming from dif-ferent industries are looked after by different standardization committees and have different sales channels into the homes. These industries often dif-fer in traditions, experiences within the home and life expectancy of their products.

Let us look at the security aspect of the home electronic system in the intelligent home. It serves many of the same applications as in a commercial office, yet suppliers are faced with new requirements typical of the home and where the users are expected to be laypersons.

External connections to and from the house and its office infor-mation system are roughly the same.

Despite some differences, a home elec-tronic system can benefit greatly from many years of development of office systems and existing supporting Inter-national Standards.

Three types of intelligent home

An intelligent home connected to the outside world can be seen as a :

• small home office ;

• small and medium enterprise (SME), without its own IT department ; or

• department in a large organiza-tion with a professional IT depart-ment.

The first and simplest of these models corresponds roughly to the pri-vate use of a computer system, with Internet connections as commonly seen today, where the inhabitant carries out all installations and maintenance.

rather a variety of needs, wishes and models that need to be considered. A coherent architecture must allow for a variety of non-conflicting models, each with full interoperability between products from all types of vendors. It also shows how solutions can bene-fit from experiences gained in other fields and that standards for intelligent homes can refer or build on specifica-tions made elsewhere.

Stepping up standardization efforts

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Inter-connection of information technology equipment, is one of the many players in the standardization arena of intelli-gent homes which :

• sees itself primarily as an enabler of interconnection ;

• puts the network in the centre of its considerations and acts as a serv-ant to the applications attached to the network ;

• has taken the lead in coordinating standardization efforts ; and

• has intensified the development of a set of consistent standards for intelligent homes (following a JTC 1 recommendation to do so).

About the authorDr. Per Kaijser is a member of the Swedish del-egation in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25, Interconnec-tion of informa-tion technology equipment, par-ticipates actively in SC 25/WG 1,

Home electronic systems, and in March 2006 chaired a special meeting on how to improve the coordination, standardization and structure of JTC 1/SC 25. He held a corporate staff position at Sie-mens AG and was responsible for IT secu-rity standardization and regulation issues before becoming an independent consult-ant in 2000. Since the mid-80s he has held positions as chair, vice chair and editor in several standardization committees.

“ All parties would benefit from International

Standards that provide a consistent set of

specifications for the multi-vendor environment

within the home.”

Protecting such a computer system from threats and weaknesses is difficult for a layperson in terms of ensuring that adequate security meas-ures are taken. Thus, it is common to outsource to professional experts the task of choosing protection mecha-nisms, and installing and maintaining them, as most small and medium-sized enterprises do today.

In the third and final model, a service provider acts as the profes-sional IT department, through which connections to the home are chan-nelled, using state-of-the-art security products and services that support the intelligent home.

This example demonstrates that there is no single intelligent home,

“ The industry feels the time is right to develop

a consistent set of International Standards for

the intelligent home.”

Now the time is right. The indus-try feels the reluctance of users invest-ing in incompatible solutions. Recent-ly, this has considerably increased the chances of integrating otherwise com-peting entities into a consistent set of International Standards.

SC 25 has intensified cooperation with those standardization bodies and consortia that will be the first to feel the benefit of such a set of standards. A special meeting devoted to improv-ing the coordination, standardization


The Digital Homeand structure of SC 25 took place in

March 2006 and was chaired by the author of this article.

The meeting prepared a set of recommendations for SC 25 to improve the coordination with the International Telecommunication Union Standard-ization Sector (ITU-T) and IEC, also present at the meeting, and to develop much needed standards on terminolo-gy and taxonomy.

Establishing a common language

It might sound academic, but a common language is the basic tool for providing a consistent and coherent set of standards. Without a common terminology it is hard to come to an agreement among the different inter-est groups that not only have varying terms for the same concept, but often use the same term with completely dif-ferent meanings.

Taxonomy is necessary in order to see where crucial specifications are missing and overlapping specifications need to be merged or selected.

SC 25 was also recommended to build on the results of the World Stand-ards Cooperation (WSC) conference in digital technologies in the home, that took place in Geneva in February 2006, and to develop answers to specific ques-tions in a joint open meeting together with ITU-T, IEC and consortia.

SC 25 has thus already started to act in its new role as recommended by JTC 1, and later confirmed by IEC, as the leading committee in the coor-dination and development of a con-sistent set of standards for intelligent homes.

Creating interoperable Digital Rights Management solutions

by Ian S. Burnett, Associate Professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and Chair of MPEG Multimedia Description Schemes sub-group and Niels Rump, Senior Consultant with London-based DRM/media consultancy Rightscom Limited

Content is all around us, and it seems to be getting ‘richer’ by the day ; we now can have true

multimedia content which combines multiple types of media with interactiv-ity. For example, sound clips, pictures, video, text and graphics are combined

to create a presentation that people can watch, listen to or interact with on a myr-iad of devices. These can range from powerful home entertainment centres to lean portable handsets – and even include fridges.

But, before creating and distrib-uting such rich content, one ought to consider a crucial element of the con-tent : the rights that various people and organizations have over the content. In general, the ‘richer’ the content, the more complex the rights situation – especial-ly when we consider that content rights are territorial while the internet is a glo-bal dissemination channel.1)

Machine-readable metadata is increasingly seen as part of the solu-tion of this problem : If we can (i) uniquely identify all pieces of content, (ii) express the rights and rules under which a piece of content can be dis-seminated or used and (iii) ensure that all devices – i.e. the home entertain-ment centres and handsets – enforce ©

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and adhere to such rules and rights, the problem appears to be solved.2)

Consequently, scientists and engineers have developed a wide array of technical components that include content identification and description schemes (to uniquely identify content as well as users, and to enable con-tent to be described in human-reada-ble form3), rights expression languag-es and accompanying dictionaries (to codify the rules), cryptographic algo-rithms (to ensure the content can only be accessed when obeying the rules), and obfuscation techniques (to make sure that users cannot circumvent, for example, cryptographic tools).

Harnessing digital rights management technologies

In parallel with developing these tools, commercial products have emerged that harness Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies with-in complete content distribution sys-tems. Unfortunately – and here comes the snag – the various offerings are incompatible with one another. Thus, a customer who buys into one com-mercial product infrastructure cannot, at least not with the same devices and applications, obtain and use content from a different provider.

While some of these systems are commercially successful – Apple’s iTunes Music Store and the iPod port-able music player are the prime but, by

far, not the only example – customers are becoming increasingly annoyed with the situation and are starting to demand interoperability. Recently, there have even been moves at the government lev-el (i.e. France) to require such interop-erability between DRM systems. This interoperability question is thus start-ing to put into question the commercial viability of the walled-garden product offerings we see today.

Returning to interoperability

But there are already standards that attempt to return to interoperabil-ity. The Open Mobile Alliance OMA4, for instance, has developed a suite of technologies and – crucially – a way to combine them into a complete tech-nical architecture which is targeted at mobile telephony handsets.

A more generic set of specifi-cations was previously developed by the very body that started the revolu-tion with MP3 : ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11, Coding of moving pictures and audio, otherwise known as the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG).

The MPEG-4 Intellectual Prop-erty Management and Protection stand-ards provide a way to signal what dig-ital rights management tools have been used to govern the content. This signal-ling can be done on two levels :

• A content provider can signal that a piece of content is governed and pro-tected by a DRM system, and which system has been used. A device or application can then decide wheth-er it is able to (i) access the content directly, (ii) download and install the relevant DRM system and then

access the content or whether (iii) the application cannot access the content at all. This approach was standard-ized in 1999 in the MPEG-4 IPMP specification (ISO/IEC 14496-1).

• Alternatively, a content provider can signal which individual tools (e.g. key management systems or rights expression languages) have been used and how they are to be com-bined to form a complete system. This significantly more complex approach was taken in the MPEG-4 IPMP Extensions defined in ISO/IEC 14496-13.

The importance of standards

While MPEG-4 made some inroads into the world of DRM, MPEG-21, The Multimedia Framework, has proved to be a standard which is inex-tricably linked with the world of DRM. MPEG-21 is a departure for the MPEG committee in that it is intended to be a complete framework standard as opposed to the previous MPEG coding and meta-data standards. It provides at its centre a standardized ‘Digital Item’ which can be used as a referential container and structure for media and metadata (see the left part of Figure 1).

Digital Items are identifiable assets that can be delivered by the MPEG-21 framework and are the fun-damental unit of transaction and distri-bution. As such, the digital item is the core element of MPEG-21 and can be extended by the other parts of the stand-ard. The core standards in MPEG-21’s dealing with digital rights management issues are outlined below :

1) A very similar situation occurs with a different type of content : Medical records or CCTV footage. Here the rights involved are dealing with privacy rather than copyright. The basic techniques and standards to deal with such issues are, however, very similar to those dealing with entertainment content.

2) It should be noted that legal and commercial considerations for such offers play a major role as one can see from even a cursory look at the appropriate newspapers and blogs. As we concentrate on technical issues, we omitted any serious considerations of these issues in this article.

3) This is needed for various reasons, one of which is content discovery : How can a potential customer find the content ?

4) http://www.openmobilealliance.org

Figure 1 – Protecting a digital item*).

*ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11/N7199: Introducing MPEG-21 IPMP Components - an Overview. Available from http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/technologies/mp21-ipmp/index.htm


The Digital HomeRights data dictionary

Rights expressions require, how-ever, a set of common semantics. It is, for example, vital that users all have the same definition of the term ‘play’. If that were not the case, content provid-ers and consumers would unavoidably disagree about what a user is allowed to do and what is not allowed.

Hence, MPEG created the Rights Data Dictionary (ISO/IEC 21000-6) which was developed to provide a struc-tured set of terms from which to form rights expressions.

Protected digital items While these parts allow expres-

sion of the rights associated with the dig-ital item and the media which it contains, the ‘securing’ of the digital item comes when it is transformed to a protected dig-ital item. One approach for MPEG would have been to create a new DRM stand-ard for digital items and their resources (ISO/IEC 21000-4), but there are already a number of DRM standards and proprie-tary mechanisms in the market place.

MPEG instead took a decision to create a ‘framework’ DRM approach – not unlike the approach previously taken in MPEG-4 – which allows the MPEG-21 multimedia framework and the digital item to interoperably exploit the many existing DRM approaches. Hence the Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) Components part of MPEG-21 provides a standard approach to describing a ‘protected representation’ of a Digital Item and then a set of infor-mation metadata schemas that allow the expression of information regarding pro-tection and DRM tools (this is depicted on the right side of Figure 1).

Thus, encryption tools that pro-tect a media resource in a digital item can easily be specified. The advantage of this approach becomes apparent when a music digital item is considered. Music companies can easily produce one pro-tected digital item referencing multi-ple content types, protected with mul-tiple DRMs. On receipt of such a dig-ital item, a user application can select suitable referenced content on the basis of e.g. DRM capabilities.

Other work currently underway

Two other DRM standardiza-tion projects are currently underway that are worth mentioning here, as their approach to reaching ‘interoperability’ is, in principle, not dissimilar to the ‘interworking’ type of interoperability that underlies MPEG-21 :

• The first is the Coral Consortium (www.coral-interop.org) which aims to promote interoperability between digital rights management (DRM) technologies used in the consumer media market. The aim is to cre-ate an open technology framework which will enable a simple and con-sistent digital entertainment experi-ence for consumers.

• Secondly, the Digital Media Project (DMP) (www.dmpf.org) is specifying a platform of technology-based tools in specifications. These aim to create a complete interoperable DRM infra-structure throughout the content val-ue chain. Interestingly, the DMP has chosen to base a number of specifica-tions on MPEG-21 standard parts.

What’s next ?We have described a DRM world

which is clearly in a state of flux. For a while, it looked as though proprie-tary DRM solutions could be the win-ners, but increasingly interoperability is becoming the catch call.

The MPEG-4 and MPEG-21 fami-lies of standards offer a wealth of technol-ogies which can be used to create inter-operable DRM solutions. As they should, they provide a base platform on which to build the applications and we are see-ing increasing interest in creating DRM interoperability on the basis of the MPEG open-standard building blocks.

It is now up to industry to make compelling offers based on this plat-form.

About the authorsIan S. Burnett is an Associate Professor at the University of Wol-longong, Australia. His current research inter-ests are in multimedia processing and deliv-ery, speech and audio

coding, 3D audio, and audio separation. He has been an active participant in MPEG and MPEG-21 in recent years, notably as Australian Head of Delegation and the Chair of the Multimedia Description Schemes sub-group. He is also the Chief Technology Officer of enikos pty ltd. (www.enikos.com), a company specializing in MPEG-21 based applications. Ian S. Burnett received his BSc, MEng, and PhD in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Bath, UK.

Niels Rump has worked in the area of digital rights manage-ment (DRM) for the last decade. He was the main developer of one of the earlier commer-cial DRM systems

(Fraunhofer IIS’ Multimedia Protection Pro-tocol MMP) and has been working within MPEG since 1997 and as such has contrib-uted significantly to the MPEG-21 standards. Mr. Rump is a Senior Consultant with Lon-don-based DRM/media consultancy Rights-com Limited. He has a computer science degree from Erlangen University, Germany.

Rights expressions language

In order to distribute content online, content providers need to express a user’s rights with respect to content. In fact it is anticipated that many Digital Items will include such ‘rights expres-sions’. Thus one of the first standards within MPEG-21 was the Rights Expres-sion Language (ISO/IEC 21000-5).

It provides a data model for rights expressions which allow rights (e.g. ‘play’) for a resource according to cer-tain conditions to be issued to users by an entity. DRM systems can then, when evaluating a rights expression, decide whether to grant a requested action to a specific user or whether such a request has to be declined.


http://www.coral-interop.org

http://www.dmpf.org

Developments and InitiativesPreparing for the ISO General Assembly in Canada

An interview with Peter Clark, Executive Director of the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), which will host the 29 th ISO General Assembly in Ottawa, Canada, from 10 to 16 September 2006.

ISO Focus : Before we turn our attention to the 29 th ISO General Assem-bly, could you briefly describe the mission of the Standards Council of Canada ?

Peter Clark : The Standards Council plays a unique role as the coordinator of Canada’s National Standards Sys-tem. Our mission as the steward of this diverse network – which encom-passes industry and business, federal and provincial government regulators and consumers – is to encourage and support the development and imple-mentation of voluntary standards that contribute to Canada’s global com-petitiveness and an improved quality of life for Canadians. Vital to meeting this objective is our ability to continu-ally build and strengthen partnerships within Canada and around the world, including our work at ISO.

ISO Focus : What motivated you

to propose Canada as the venue for the ISO General Assembly in 2006 ?

Peter Clark : As a leader at ISO, we felt the time was right for Canada to take its turn once again as the host of the General Assembly. While the Stand-ards Council has hosted a number of other major international standards events in recent years, including the ISO Committee on Consumer Policy (COPOLCO) Plenary in 2005, and the ISO Networking Conference 1) in 2003, it has been nearly two-and-a-half dec-ades since the ISO General Assembly was last held in Canada.

By bringing the global meeting to Otta-wa, we will not only demonstrate to the rest of the world that Canada is com-mitted to international standardization, but also heighten awareness among Canadians about ISO and the impact that international standards have on their everyday lives. At the same time, by holding the meeting in Canada’s capital city, we will be able to better

capture the attention of government officials and decision-makers. In par-ticular, the open session on healthcare, is an opportunity to highlight that role in an area that is of vital importance to all Canadians.

ISO Focus : What would you like to see coming out of the open session on healthcare ?

Peter Clark : In recent years, it has become increasingly obvious that health-care is a global issue that demands glo-bal cooperation, a fact that has been made abundantly clear by threats such as SARS 2) and the Avian Flu. The open session is an opportunity to build an international consensus on the most significant healthcare challenges fac-ing the world today and to consider the capacity for international standards to provide solutions to help address these evolving concerns.

1) ISO Networking Conference has now been replaced by ISO/IEC Marketing and Communication Forum

2) Severe Accute Respiratory Syndrome is a viral respiratory illness

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Presentations and discussions will examine the impact that ISO standards are already having on healthcare in areas such diverse areas as infection control, safety of medical devices, and privacy of electronic health records systems, and look at what opportunities exist to expand this work even further. Ultimately, at the end of the day, what we hope to achieve is a better understanding not only of the potential for international standards to address the current gaps that exist in glo-bal healthcare, but a renewed sense of purpose and focus on moving forward to meet these objectives.

Peter Clark : Obviously, we are very proud of the leading role that Canada has played over the last decade in the development of the world-renowned ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 series of standards. As well as being a positive reflection of Canada’s innovative role in standards development worldwide, this work also reflects our commitment to ensuring that international standards contribute to global sustainable development and corporate social responsibility.

In particular, the new ISO stand-ards for greenhouse gas emission ver-ification demonstrates the adaptabil-ity of international management sys-tems standards to meet the needs of both industry and governments, and to provide tools for addressing some of the most prevalent global challeng-es we face today.

ISO Focus : While this will not be Canada’s first time hosting the ISO General Assembly, what has changed since the event was last held in Toron-to in 1982?

Peter Clark : Where should I begin ? It might be easier to answer the question, what hasn’t changed. Globalization, the Internet, emerging economies in Brazil, China and India, these have all been factors in shaping a world that is more focused than ever on internation-al consensus-building to create stand-ards that have global relevance.

ISO Focus : The Standards Council of Canada has provided the international leadership of ISO/ TC 176 on quality management and ISO/TC 207 on environmental man-agement since the onset. Canada has also been one of the instigators for the development of ISO standards for the quantification, reporting and verifi-cation of greenhouse gas emissions. Do you have any comments on this “ posi-tive energy ” ?

Looking back at the 1982 Gen-eral Assembly, ISO has matured sig-nificantly. From an organization that brought 66 member countries around the table in Toronto, to one that is inviting 156 countries to participate in the 29 th General Assembly in Otta-wa this September, ISO has become the leading authority in internation-al standards.

Among the biggest global chang-es that have impacted both ISO and Canada has been the way that coun-tries trade with each other. With the rise of the bilateral and multilateral free trade arrangements, including the World Trade Organization, and the col-lapse of tariffs and many other protec-tionist barriers, we now truly have a global economy. Within this context, international standards have been rec-ognized as vitally important for ensur-ing that products, systems and services designed and manufactured around the world are safe and compatible.

These and other factors have shifted and expanded the focus of ISO’s work, but one thing that has remained unchanged over this time has been the continuing commitment of all ISO members to the consensus approach to standards, which will con-tinue to ensure its success today and tomorrow.

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Developments and Initiatives

Benchmarking provision of IT services

by Jenny Dugmore, Convenor of the working group responsible for ISO/IEC 20000

In the 1980s the IT industry began to realize just how important a high standard of management was for

operational services. Work on devel-oping best practice service manage-ment processes started then and con-tinues to this day. ISO/IEC 200001), the first international service man-agement standard, originates in work started by the British Standards Insti-tution (BSI), ISO member for the Unit-ed Kingdom, in 1989.

ISO/IEC 20000 is divided into two parts : part 1 is a specification for use in audits and part 2 gives guidance on the requirements. As a technical management system standard, it cov-ers management responsibilities, con-tinual improvements, new or changed services and 13 service management processes. Service management is com-monly dependent on complex supply chains spanning many countries and benefits from common standards.

The service management pro-cesses, shown in Figure 1, apply to a wide range of technology enabled oper-ational services. The relevance to oper-ational services means that the bene-fits of achieving the best practices are linked to the majority of the total life-time costs of IT systems, often referred to as ‘ true cost of ownership ’.

Tallying the tangible benefits

Research on the true cost of IT systems refers to figures as high as ‘ 80 % of IT spend ’ attributed to on-going support services. As these are services controlled by service man-agement processes, improvements in the efficiency of service manage-ment can deliver a large reduction in the IT costs of an organization. Wide-

spread adoption of the same best prac-tices will also improve gross domes-tic product of a country. In addition, best practices improve customer sat-isfaction with services. This is a less tangible but equally important benefit of achieving the best practices defined in the standard.

self-assessment workbook and a man-agers’ guide to service management. The managers’ guide also serves as a management introduction to ITIL®. Both publications have been converted to reflect ISO/IEC 20000 by the British Standards Association (BSI).

Early adopters’ scheme provides valuable feedback

When BS 15000 was first pub-lished, the BSI committee also launched an early adopters’ scheme in which the committee worked with service provid-ers to test the benefits and drawbacks of the BS 15000 series. The early adopt-ers represented a wide range of orga-

ISO/IEC 20000 is based on BS 15000, which was superseded in December 2005 following the interna-tional fast-tracking process. BS 15000 was in turn based on work started in 1989 and a code of practice first pub-lished in 1995, with a second edition in 1998. The second edition covered more processes, and reflected the evo-lution of best practices, including those covered by the British Government’s advice known as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL® 2)).

As the result of demand for independent quality assessments and certification audits, from both serv-ice providers and customers depend-ent on technology enabled services, a specification standard was published in 2000. For the first time the standard was numbered BS 15000. By this stage supporting publications also included a

nizational sizes and types, including public and private sector, commercial and in-house service providers.

The early adopters provided valuable feedback, leading to a sec-ond edition of BS 15000, published in 2002/3. This included new clauses cov-ering the ‘ Plan-Do-Check-Act’ cycle and other closely related management responsibilities. The clauses covering the 13 service management processes remained largely unchanged. The only significant change was removal of the requirements on charging for servic-es, as charging is not appropriate for all service providers. This left require-ments for the budgeting and accounting largely unchanged, as they are appli-cable to all organizations.

The early adopters had recom-mended that BS 15000 should be sep-arate from, but aligned to, other man-

Figure 1 – The service management processes.

Capacity management

Service continuity and availability management

Service deliveryService level management

Service reporting

Information security management

Budgeting and accounting for IT services Control

Configuration managementChange management

ControlIncident managementProblem management

ReleaseRelease management

ControlBusiness relationship

managementSupplier management


agement system standards such as the ISO 9000 series, whilst retaining the detailed requirements for best prac-tice service management. Alignment with management system standards was also compatible with growing industry recognition that management involvement and continual service and process improvements is fundamental to best practice service processes. It was also compatible with achieving BS 15000 requirements for effective-ness and cost-efficiency and not the addition of a bureaucratic overhead, i.e. best practices are about ‘doing, not documenting’.

Alignment brings benefits

Between the first and second edition of the original code of practice, the code of practice and ITIL® were aligned. The alignment continues with ISO/IEC 20000, bringing benefits to both. The current ITIL® developments are also influenced by recognition that alignment with the standard is benefi-cial for ITIL, the standard and the ser-vice management industry.

The relationship between the two sets of documents is illustrated in Figure 2. Each document serves a dif-ferent purpose and each complements the other. Viewed top-down, the speci-fication provides the quality goals that a service provider should achieve. This is supported by the advice and expla-nations provided in the code of prac-tice. In turn, ITIL® advice and guid-ance provides practical examples and options that can be tailored by each organization. Although adoption of ITIL advice is not a requirement of

the standard, many people in the ser-vice management industry view ISO/IEC 20000 as ‘ the standard for assess-ing ITIL implementations.’

An internal quality goalWith the second edition of the

standard, interest accelerated outside the United Kingdom. This was also supported by the rapid growth in use of ITIL advice outside the United King-dom, by both public and private sector service providers. Another factor for increased interest was the start-up of schemes for certification audits, such the scheme managed by itSMF 3).

The standard has been used in procurement of services. A notable exam-ple is the UK’s National Health Scheme ‘ Connecting for Health ’. The NHS is the third largest supplier in the world, sec-ond only to NASA in the amount of IT used, and the standard has been used in what is now the largest IT programme in

1) ISO/IEC 20000:2005 is issued in two parts under the general title, Information technology – Service management.

2) ITIL® (IT infrastructure library) is a registered trade mark of OGC (the Office of Government Commerce), Rosebery Court, St. Andrew’s Business Park, Norwich, Norfolk, NR7 0HS.

3) itSMF (Information Technology Service Management Forum), an ITIL® user group that is a not-for-profit membership organization with national chapters in many countries. This members organization consists of national chapters and itSMF International.

Web page references :International Organization for Standardization (ISO): www.iso.org

British Standards Institution (supporting publications as hardcopy) : www.BSI-GLOBAL.com

BSI e-book store (supporting publications as e-books): www.eshop.bsi-global.com

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) : www.itil.co.uk

Office of Government Commerce (OGC) : www.ogc.gov.uk

IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) : www.itsmf.com

Figure 2 – Relationship between ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL.

ISO/IEC 20000 -1

ISO/IEC 20000 -2

ITIL

In-house policies, processes and procedures

Part 1 – Specification of compulsor y requirements

Part 2 – Code of practice advice and explanations of Part 1

Practitioners detailed best practice guidance

Implementation

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Europe. Compliance with the standard is a requirement placed on suppliers.

A wide range of service pro-viders have adopted the standard as an internal quality goal, for example, using the standard to assist with con-solidating services following mergers or acquisitions and also for unifying the processes adopted by each loca-tion, in many cases crossing national boundaries.

Service providers that have achieved formal certification against BS 15000 (and recently ISO/IEC 20000) include the public sector in the UK, but also outside the UK, for exam-ple the State Revenue Office, Victo-ria (Australia).

Many of the certificated service providers are large commercial organ-izations. Some of the better-known organizations include Accenture, Affil-iated Computer Services (ACS), AXA, British Telecom, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), Electronic Data Systems (EDS), General Electric (GE), Hewlett Packard, Hitachi Electronics, IBM, NEC, Samsung, Siemens Busi-ness Services, TNT and Wipro Tech-nologies.

About the authorDr. Dugmore is Director of Service Matters, a service man-agement consultancy company. Her career spans operational senior manage-ment, service

management and consultancy. Dr. Dugmore chairs the BSI committee that produced BS 15000, on which ISO/IEC 20000 was based. She was the Project Editor for the drafting of ISO/IEC 20000, and is now Convenor of the working group responsible for ISO/IEC 20000. Dr. Dugmore is on the itSMF’s ISO/IEC 20000 Certification Management Board and on the UK Government’s ITIL Refresh Management Board.In 2005 itSMF awarded her the Paul Rappaport Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to service management.

Successful service providers are scattered around the world, including in Australia, Austria, China (including Hong Kong, China), Germany, Hun-gary, India, Japan, The Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, the USA, as well as the United Kingdom.

To make the conversion as sim-ple as possible, BSI has published BIP 0039, The Differences between BS 15000 and ISO/IEC 20000, based on the log of changes kept during the drafting of the standard to help with this conversion process. This publica-tion is the tenth publication in ‘Achiev-ing ISO/IEC 20000’ series, converted from the BS 15000 versions on with-drawal of BS 15000 and publication of ISO/IEC 20000. Each publica-tion explains different aspects of the requirements and recommendations of the standard.

Requirements : There are 16 changes to requirements (or removal of a requirement by conversion to a NOTE). An example is the role of a ‘ senior responsible owner ’ having become a part 1 requirement, not a part 2 recommendation.

Definitions: ISO/IEC 20000 now includes a 15th term : ‘service provid-er’ – the organization aiming to achieve ISO/IEC 20000. The policy for both BS 15000 and the first edi-tion of ISO/IEC 20000 was to use terms as defined in an English lan-guage dictionary, rather than special terms.

Additional improvements underway

The standard is now managed by ISO/IEC JTC1 subcommittee SC 7, Software and system engineering, and falls in the scope of newly estab-lished working group 25. Additional improvements identified during the fast tracking process have been used as the basis for a new work item pro-posal. The results of the vote on this had not been published at the time this article was written, but if the propos-als are acceptable they will include the following.

Scope and applicability

Options include advice on scop-ing for service management planning and improvements and scope state-ments for certification audits. Sugges-tions on applicability of the standard

Achieving BS 15000, and now ISO/IEC 20000, has been supported by the availability of courses of the inter-pretation and use of the standard, for auditors, consultants, managers and practitioners.

Reflecting international best practices

Because of the international interest in BS 15000, it became clear that a national standard was being wide-ly used internationally. This triggered the decision to submit BS 15000 to the fast-track process, which took less than 14 months from submission to publi-cation of ISO/IEC 20000.

Although 450 changes were made to BS 15000, for most organiza-tions conversion to ISO/IEC 20000 was not a major problem because few of the requirements had been fundamen-tally changed. Changes also reflected best practices that service providers aspiring to certification should have adopted already.

Many of the changes made dur-ing the drafting of ISO/IEC 20000 were clause re-numbering and standardiza-tion of terms such as ‘ service provid-er ’. Extra sub-clause headings, short-er paragraphs, use of notes and alpha bullets were inserted to simplify cross-referencing. For those that had relied on BS 15000 for training, consulting, service improvement planning, cer-tification schemes, auditing, or tool design, the changes had to be made to their material.

“ Improvements in the efficiency of service

management can deliver a large reduction in the IT costs of an organization.”



by Prof. Rongshu Zeng, Prof. Dehui Cheng, and Prof. Zhuoran Lin

As a modern basic instrumental analytical technique, microbeam analysis involves worldwide

commercial manufacturing and sale of sophisticated instrumentation, includ-ing electron microprobe (EMP), scan-ning electron microscope (SEM), ana-lytical electron microscope (AEM) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscope (EDX)., and operation and services of microbeam analysis laboratories (gov-ernmental, commercial, academic or educational).

This instrumentation and its methodology are widely employed in quality management and assurance and research and development in basic and high-tech industries, including metal-lurgy, chemical engineering, petroleum, semiconductor materials, micro-elec-tronics, information technology, nan-otechnology, medical sciences and bio-technology., in testing and research in many sectors of the economy, technol-ogy and sciences. Quantitatively, the overall scale of the markets addressed by the committee may be indirectly reflected in the following estimated worldwide figures for the past three years of more than:

• 100 000 microbeam analysis instru-ments in operation;

• 50 000 000 microbeam analysis samples analyzed annually;

• 10 000 microbeam analysis instru-ments manufactured annually.

Looking aheadA glimpse into microbeam analysis

include formally extending the scope to include communications (i.e. ICT instead of IT) or the even wider ‘tech-nology enabled services’.

Detail and style

Improvements to the detail and style of both parts 1 and 2 are planned. The bulk of the improvements sug-gested were on code of practice, so part 2 is expected to be given prior-ity. Improvements include:

• consistency in the level of detail in part 2, relative to part 1;

• recommendations on the code of practice that reflect the interests of an international audience;

• style of advice written so that it is suitable for more junior manage-ment and practitioners; and

• more advice on service management planning and process integration.

Harmonization

ISO/IEC 20000 is to be harmo-nized with other International Stan-dards and the work of subcommittee SC 7, Software and system engineer-ing, of ISO/IEC JTC 1, whilst retain-ing the benefits of alignment between ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL.

As the objectives for each pro-cess in ISO/IEC 20000 do not align to other SC 7 process-based standards, it has been suggested that ISO/IEC 20000 should conform to ISO/IEC 15504-2, Requirements for process reference models.

“ A wide range of service providers have adopted the

standard as an internal quality goal.”

ISO technical committee ISO/TC 202, Microbeam analysis, was estab-lished in 1992 with the Standardiza-tion Administration of China (SAC) as its secretariat, to develop Internation-al Standards in the field of microbeam analysis.

Harmonizing analytical practices

Over the past 13 years, ISO/TC 202 has published six International Standards and currently eight others are at different stages of development.

The benefits already realized as a result of the published Internation-al Standards, and the ones expected

“ International Standards have harmonized analytical practices for microbeam

analysis.”

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from those under development, may be generalized as the international harmonization of analytical practic-es for microbeam analysis (includ-ing terminology, methodology, ref-erence materials, instrument specifi-cation, laboratory accreditation, data processing and transfer, etc.) for reli-able, generally recognized, inter-com-parable and inter-compatible results and data, which facilitate internation-al cooperation, interaction and trade in the relevant business sectors and pub-lic services.

Shaping new technology ISO/TC 202 has in recent years

been looking at new areas where microbeam analysis can be used, and which need urgent international stand-ardization, such as :

• global human health : focussing on exploring methods for morphologi-cal identification of coronavirus, a group of viruses causing a variety of diseases in humans and animals, by using electron microscopy ;

• the environment : where microbeam analysis is increasingly used in national and international manage-ment of the control of air, water and soil pollution ;

• nanotechnology : a fast growing area of research in many fields, including protective paints and coatings, metal cutting tools, hard discs, advanced

drug delivering systems, etc. A key factor in developing this technology has been in the use of microbeam techniques, such as electron micro-scopy, to characterize material at a nanoscale in terms of its morphol-ogy, atomic structure and chemical composition.

Achieving international standardization

The conditions required to achieve international standardization in the above-mentioned areas lie in the fact that :

• electron microscopy is a powerful and effective tool for the in-depth study and identification of viruses. Many medical scientific research institutions, epidemic prevention centres and comprehensive hospi-tals worldwide are equipped with transmission electron microscopes and associated techniques ;

• a global army of research scien-tists and well-trained doctors and technicians are therefore capable of detecting and identifying such coronavirus ;

• there has also been a global army of research scientists and techni-cians in laboratories worldwide, involved in the development of nan-otechnology, using electron micro-scopy and other microbeam instru-mentation.

Facing the challengesAlthough microbeam analysis

is highly sophisticated and has under-gone major technical innovations, such as the automation of instrumen-tation and computerization, it remains inherently complex. Thus, in order to achieve reproducible analytical data and results, the development of computer software based on standardized proce-dures with the input of knowledge of professional experts worldwide in the relevant field of microbeam analysis is vital. ISO/TC 202 is pooling its glo-bal resources to develop internation-ally standardized analytical protocols as the technical basis for developing microbeam analysis software, which will bring innovation to the interna-tional community of software devel-opers and end-users.

“ Internationally standardized microbeam

analysis software will bring innovation to the

international community of software developers

and end-users.”

Dr. Rongshu Zeng is the Chair of ISO/TC 202, Microbeam analysis, and the Vice Chair of the Chinese national technical com-mittee of microbeam anal-ysis standardiza-

tion (SAC/TC 38). Dr. Zeng is a Professor at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Dehui Cheng, Professor of Pathology, is a senior expert of electron micro-scopic diagnosis of viral infec-tions. She is the editor of the Journal of the Chinese Electron

Microscopy Society and is the editor of the Chinese Journal of Pathology.

Prof. Zhuoran Lin, Professor of Physics, is a research fellow at the Institute of Geology, China Seismological Bureau. He was the Secretary of ISO/TC 202, Microbeam anal-

ysis, and is now a member of its advisory group.

About the authors



Main Focus


Environmental sustainability

The ISO 14064 standards for green-house gas accounting and verifica-tion published on 1 March 2006 by ISO provide government and indus-try with an integrated set of tools for programmes aimed at reducing green-house gas emissions, as well as for emissions trading.

These high profile standards – which were presented at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Mon-treal, Canada, in late 2005 – will pro-vide clarity and consistency between those reporting GHG emissions and stakeholders.

This month’s dossier homes in on what ISO is doing (not only within ISO tech-nical committee ISO/TC 207, Envi-ronmental management, but also in a multitude of other ISO committees) to preserve the environment, and why standards are first-rate tools to help bolster efforts to promote fair trade, ensure cleaner industry and assist in global regulation-setting.

The issue brings together a portfolio of articles from ISO technical com-mittee ISO/TC 207, which is respon-sible for the ISO 14000 family, in the development of standards for environ-mental management – from labels and

declarations, to life cycle assessment and communication.

Articles cover such topics as accura-cy and precision in water sampling, improving the management and effi-ciency of water services, managing soil quality, measuring radioactivity in the environment, and the benefits of glass building products and plas-tics. Concrete examples of how Inter-national Standards help to contribute to a healthier, more sustainable plan-et are also included.

In an exclusive interview in the June 2006 issue of ISO Focus, UNFCCC Officer-in-Charge Richard Kinley, explains the purpose of the Clean Development Mechanism and its expo-nential growth since the signing of the Kyoto protocol in 2005. For Mr. Kin-ley, ISO is making an important con-tribution to climate protection. He says that “ ISO standards provide tools for businesses and governments to eval-uate and enhance their environmental performance against certain accept-able criteria.”

Interview with the IEC President In an inter-view with ISO Focus, Renzo Tani, IEC Presi-dent, explains the bene-fits of the World Stan-dards Cooperation – the col laborat ive effort between IEC, ITU and ISO – and shares his aspi-rations for the future. He also explains the milestones in IEC’s history and the celebrations being planned to mark the organization’s 100 th anniversary.

Ensuring quality in welding Weld-ing is undoubted-ly one of the more important manu-facturing process-es available to industry. Accord-ing to the authors of this article, however, whilst welding is the preferred joining method in many industrial sectors, a critical factor is to ensure that the welds produced are satisfactory in terms of mechani-cal performance and soundness. The article traces good welding practices and how to considerably improve the quality of welding on a worldwide basis.

Plastics terminology You want to know what a thermoplastic elastomer is ? Or what MABS means ? Wel-come to the world of ISO technical committee ISO/TC 61, Plastics, sub-committee SC 1, Plastics terminolo-gy. Many people find terminology an unexciting subject, but it is a vital part of communication. The author explains the importance of plastics terminology standards and how we cannot do without them.

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