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Microsoft Hatches Interop Vendor Alliance

Microsoft has formed a cross-industry group of software and hardware vendors aimed at enhancing interoperability with its software.

Dubbed the Interop Vendor Alliance (IVA), the fledgling organization was announced Tuesday at the company's EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa sales region) TechED/IT Forum conference in Barcelona, Spain. The concept is to work with both partners and competitors to increase customers' return on their IT investments, according to a Microsoft statement.

Founding members of the alliance include AMD, BEA Systems, Business Objects, CA, The Carbon Project, Centeris, Citrix Systems, GXS, IP Commerce, JNBridge, Kernel Networks, Levi, Ray & Shoup Inc., Microsoft, NEC Corp. of America, Network Appliance, Novell, Q4bis, Quest Software, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Software AG, SugarCRM, Sun Microsystems, Symphony Services Corp., Xcalia, and XenSource.

The IVA's goal, Microsoft's statement says, is “to foster interoperability across IT systems through communication and identification of opportunities for enhanced collaboration.” To do that, the IVA will attempt to encourage vendor collaboration to foster interoperability, enable scenario-based testing for interoperability, and communicate vendor interoperability solutions to customers.

Microsoft says it welcomes other organizations and vendors to explore membership in the alliance.

More information on the IVA is available here.

About the Author

Stuart J. Johnston has covered technology, especially Microsoft, since February 1988 for InfoWorld, Computerworld, Information Week, and PC World, as well as for Enterprise Developer, XML & Web Services, and .NET magazines.

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