                    To:  Members of X3T10
                  From:  Dal Allan
                  Date:  May 13, 1994
               Subject:  ISO Standards 

In Gene Milligan's ISO Report last November, he advised the members that 
there would be no action at ISO SC25 WG4 on ATA or CAM. 

The ballot of ISO members for the New Work Items failed because there were 
not sufficient countries interested in participating. 

Gene suggested that there be no dark motives subscribed to this action as no 
country is against our standards. ISO support for an interface standard can 
be interpreted as a rubber stamp activity on a US standard. 

The members were offered three choices:

     a) Do nothing
     b) Look for another country to support
     c) Wait for ANSI approval and then Fast Track at ISO

Several years ago, the equivalent to X3T9 was ISO SC13, which met once every 
18 months. ISO processing was fairly laborious then, but a few years ago a 
political maneuver within JTC/1 resulted in the disappearance of SC13 to 
become WG4 of SC25. In effect, a demotion. 

There is another alternative to making standards, and it has become the 
primary way for optical media standards to become ISO standards, and that is 
through ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association). While in Europe 
earlier this month I had a long conversation with Secretary General Jan van 
den Beld about whether the same principles could be applied to interface 
standards.  

Not only has processing optical media standards become more efficient, ECMA 
has excellent editorial capabilities and is capable of taking over the 
complete role of documenting a standard for ISO publication. 

ECMA holds a General Assembly twice a year, and conducts letter ballots at 
the request of working groups, so there is little or no lost time between 
completing a project and beginning its standardization. 

The typical time between completing a project and having an approved ECMA 
standard is 6 months. The document is then forwarded for Fast Tracking to 
ISO, which can take another 6 months. 

One of the requirements for any project at ECMA is that three member 
companies (note companies, not countries) support the effort. There is a 
large overlap between ECMA membership and X3T10/X3T11 companies. 

Sixteen companies overlap with General Assembly members: 

     3M                      Exabyte              Siemens 
     AT&T                    Hewlett Packard      StorageTek 
     Bull                    Hitachi              Sun Microsystems 
     Compaq                  IBM                  Unisys 
     Conner Peripherals      Maxoptix 
     Digital Equipment       Ricoh 

Although ECMA has European in its name, meetings are not restricted to being 
in Europe and holding meetings in the United States is a consideration. Many 
many years ago, during SCSI-1 development there was a joint meeting of ISO 
(then under Dara Hekimi) in Washington DC.

It would be possible for every member to become more involved with ISO 
standards, if ECMA met once per year with X3T10 (in an odd month) and once 
with X3T11 (in an even month). We would need an International Representative 
to attend the General Assembly meetings in Geneva twice a year.

This approach would give each committee three opportunities a year to take 
action on standards under development.

At the present time, every member company is being levied $300 per committee 
per year to cover ANSI support for ISO activities. There have been efforts 
in the past to have ANSI become the Secretariat for SC13 (and later SC25 
WG4) but they have been rejected. We get virtually nothing for $300/year 
because all of ANSI's efforts are directed towards support of activities 
other than interfaces. 

Jan indicated that ECMA would be interested in supporting our activities, 
which raises the question of why. First, ECMA supports itself by membership 
fees, and there is a strong possibility that more companies will join ECMA 
if interface activities were included in its scope of ISO standardization. 
Secondly, I suggested that the direct costs for holding meetings in the 
United States that we can all attend be covered by the members (this cost is 
estimated to be in the ballpark of $100/member/year). 

In a nutshell, benefits to this program are higher efficiency at lower cost:

 1. More meeting opportunities to take action on international standards.
 2. Participation in international activities available to all members.
 3. Direct editorial support from the ECMA support organization. 
 4. Lower costs for processing of ISO standards. 

I do not propose that the members accept working with ECMA as a direct 
substitute for the process we understand through ANSI because this system is 
new to most of us. 

I do propose that we conduct a trial by forwarding one of our pending 
standards to ECMA, and try out the system that succeeded for optical media. 

With the knowledge gained, we can make a decision at the end of this year on 
whether we want to withdraw from processing ISO standards through ANSI (this 
removes the $300 annual fee). The $100 levy to collect funds to cover the 
direct ECMA costs is within our control, just like the editor's fund which 
is maintained for us by CBEMA. 




