The European e-Business Report The European e ... - empirica

The European e-Business Report 2006/071.3 e-Standards and InteroperabilityDefinitionsA "standard", used as a technical term, is "a technical specification approved by arecognised standardisation body for repeated or continuous application, with whichcompliance is not compulsory". 8 There are national, European and international technicalstandards. In addition to such formal standards there are also industry specificationswhich result from collaboration, in consortia or smaller partnerships, subject to differinglevels of openness and participation.Whatever the source, agreement on shared technical standards is an instrument toachieve interoperability between different systems. Without interoperability of ICTsystems, which requires standards and compatibility between standards, advanced formsof e-business (such as the digital integration of systems in B2B exchanges) are hardlypossible.Industry organisations, however, often use the term “standard” in a broader sense, e.g.for industry-accepted e-business solutions such as RosettaNet® (in the ICT andelectronics industries) or papiNet® (in the pulp & paper industry). Moreover, there arealso solutions for data exchange agreed upon among a limited number of companiesoperating in the same supply chain, which can be referred to as proprietary standards.1.3.1 Types of e-standards usedEDI (electronic data interchange) is still the preferred messaging standard amongmedium-sized and large firms in the P&P industry. About 10% of medium-sizedcompanies and 30% of large firms report that they use EDI, but less than 5% of smallcompanies did so (see Exhibit 1.3-1). In manufacturing industries, more companies useEDI. EDI users were asked whether they had migration plans to switch from standard tointernet EDI. In all sectors, the majority of users said that they had no such plans.The deployment of XML-based standards has been very dynamic over recent years,and diffusion now approaches the same level as EDI-based standards.For e-business, ebXML is the most important standard within this group. ebXML 9 is asingle set of internationally agreed technical specifications and common XML semanticsto facilitate global trade. The ebXML framework for e-business is a joint initiative ofUN/CEFACT and OASIS (see www.ebxml.org). The initiative started in November 1999with the aim to “enable anyone, anywhere to do business with anyone else”. 108910Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 22 June 1998, laying down aprocedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations, seehttp://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/ oj/dat/1998/l_204/l_20419980721en00370048.pdfelectronic business using eXtensible Markup Language – see also Glossary in Annex I.For detailed information about the background and adoption of XML and ebXML, see e-Business W@tch Special Study on "e-Business Interoperability and Standards" (September2005), available at www.ebusiness-watch.org ('resources').47