The Open Group Reaches 500th Membership Milestone

By The Open Group

To reach the number 500 in anything is a significant achievement. In business, the top companies in the world vie to be part of the Fortune 500 or the S&P 500. In automobile racing, top annual competitions for racers—the Indy 500 and Daytona 500—require participants to drive 500 laps around a racetrack. Even American baseball has its own 500 Homerun Club, which includes legendary hitters such as Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron who achieved more than 500 homeruns in a lifetime.

We’re pleased to announce that The Open Group has also joined the ranks of those that can mark a milestone of 500. We welcome Universidad Continental to The Open Group, which has the distinction of being our 500^th membership. Universidad Continental, in Peru, is the first university member of The Open Group in South America.

Although The Open Group was formed over 20 years ago, our organization has experienced significant uptick during the past few years. In a global economy where businesses have become ever-more dependent on technology, there is more need for technology standards today than ever before. With technologies such as Big Data, the Cloud and the Internet of Things, our mission of Boundaryless Information Flow™ to break down silos among and within organizations has never been more important. Companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of how open standards can help them transform their business and achieve their goals—this milestone and our recent help prove that.

Over these past 20 years, The Open Group has seen many other significant milestones—the 40^th anniversary of the Single UNIX® specification, the rapid growth of certification programs such TOGAF® 9,, which has reached over 47,000 certifications worldwide, and the ArchiMate® Certification for People program, which has more than 2,500 individual certifications. (UNIX®, TOGAF® and ArchiMate® are standards of The Open Group.) But to reach our 500^th membership of The Open Group as an organization is particularly memorable. It shows that our approach of developing consensus-driven requirements and policies and sharing best practices is resonating in a time where rapid change is the only norm when it comes to technology. And in times of uncertainty like these, open standards are one way that companies can gain stability while maintaining the flexibility and agility they need to keep moving forward and to advance with the industry.

As a consortia, The Open Group would be nothing without its members—the vendors, customers, systems and solutions suppliers, integrators, consultants, government, academia and researchers that span the entire IT community. The collaborative work the membership continues to do through the Forums and Work Groups to bring standards and certifications to both the global IT community and vertical industries is helping to shape the future of enterprise integration. As we continue to create standards that touch every part of the industry—from Enterprise Architecture to Security, IT management, Open Platform 3.0™, the supply chain, IT4IT™, Healthcare and embedded systems—we look forward to the continued support of our members and to future member milestones.