040.80: The ISODE Consortium
by S.E. Hardcastle-Kille
RFC 822: ic-info@isode.com
X.400: S=ic-info; O=ISODE Consortium; PRMD=ISODE; ADMD=0; C=GB;

The ISO Development Environment (ISODE) is an implementation of
selected OSI protocols and applications, originally developed to
experiment with the OSI upper layers.  It has been used for a
very wide range of work, and is the most widely deployed OSI
implementation.

An example of ISODE's success is the PP X.400 MTA which is being
widely used for protocol conversion between RFC 822 and X.400 in
high-volume message switching applications.  ISODE is also being
adopted by an increasing number of organizations as a "mail hub,"
due to its advanced management facilities.  The QUIPU X.500
component has been closely tied in with the pilot deployment of
X.500 in the research community.  This pilot now encompasses over
half a million entries in over four hundred Directory System
Agents (DSAs) in over twenty countries.

The ISODE Consortium has been established to give the ISODE a
firmer base so that it can continue to evolve and thrive.  The
ISODE Consortium will evolve the ISODE to make it more attractive
and straightforward to build OSI-based products.  By focusing on
system components, such as layer services and MTAs, the ISODE
Consortium will provide building blocks that are complex and
costly to build, allowing vendors to focus their efforts on user
interfaces to provide product differentiation.

The ISODE Consortium will take the ISODE out of the public
domain, and commercial organi will gain access to the source by
joining the ISODE Consortium.  The consortium will raise revenue
primarily by membership fees and product royalties.  There are
several types of membership, for commercial organi, research
organi, and a low cost individual membership.

The ISODE Consortium will also retain and strengthen links with
the research community, and will make ISODE available to
academic, government, and not-for-profit organi with research as
their primary purpose by means of a simply administered zero-cost
licence.  The ISODE Consortium will also work closely with the
Internet and the Internet Society.

The key components which the ISODE Consortium will work on will
be application level components of networked applications.  The
major focus will be on "system" components such as MTAs (Message
Transfer Agents) and DSAs (Directory System Agents).  These
complex components are a major strength of ISODE, and a
fundamental component of any product.  Support for use over
TCP/IP will be promoted in parallel with use over OSI lower
layers.

The following areas technical areas will be developed by the
ISODE Consortium:

 o  Conformance Testing

 o  Simplified ``plug and play'' configuration.

 o  Improved management using a combination of X.500 and SNMP.

 o  Public key based security.

 o  Performance Improvements.

 o  Mapping of OSI applications onto a lightweight stack.

 o  Addition of new technology and applications into ISODE.

The president of the ISODE Consortium is Steve Hardcastle-Kille,
who was previously a Senior Research Fellow at University College
London, and has played a key role in the design and evolution of
the ISODE. The ISODE Consortium will establish a US office in May
1992 in the Washington, DC area.  The ISODE Consortium will have
a strong presence in Europe, and startup of the European office
is planned for early 1993.