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Design for Interoperability: Is It Like the Weather?

As part of the February 21 announcement of the Microsoft Interoperability Principles, there were promised developments around fostering a community of interest regarding interoperability. 

One activity, the Document Interoperability Initiative, promised in February 21 remarks from Bob Muglia, was kicked off on March 6 with some roundtables.  Microsoft Interoperability Evangelist Craig Kitterman is spear-heading this activity.  The only accounts I've found are on Kitterman's blog and a recent forum post.  So far, the activity is not very visible, with Kitterman gate-keeping the conversation.  It is not clear how this activity will open up at this point, or even if that is a desired direction.  I remain hopeful, since this is my primary focus on interoperability (along with document-processing/-management middleware).

Another activity, the Interoperability Forum, had a web page with promised initiation on March 20.  On that day, the three MSDN Forums on Interoperability were announced.  The three forums provide interesting coverage:

• Interoperability Conversations
  for general discussion and questions on interoperability
• Technical Interoperability Scenarios
  for discussion of scenarios of Information Technology importance
• Achieving Interoperability through Standards
  as a place to have questions answered

There's more "you-have-questions, Microsoft-has-answers" than I expected to find in the introductory materials and the thrust of the descriptions for each forum.  I sense that there is a preference for bilateral communication rather than community discussion.  Yet it's a start, and I am hopeful, visiting regularly from the first day. 

I'm impatient.  It's been less than a month and the Interoperability Forums are terribly quiet.  As often happens when an MSDN Forum is quiet and is on a general or generic topic, it attracts misfires:  questions and requests for assistance that are pretty far off from the topic (at least, as I understand the topic).  The supporters of the forum have been very gracious in assisting posters and suggesting places where they can find an appropriate technical community for further assistance.  I've started posting, but I don't know what to offer that finds a responsive-chord in others who have interoperability concerns.

I worry that these forums might not achieve a critical-mass of participation and community.

Is interoperability something that people talk about, expect to be provided, and yet no one does much about it?

I have this long list of possible barriers to thriving of the Interoperability Forum;

• It is a backwater of the MSDN Forums which is far more oriented to folks who have immediate technical difficulties and want support (from peers or Microsoft experts).  [For perspective, go to the entrance of MSDN Forums and scroll all the way down to the end where Interoperability has been tacked on.  Look at the kind and quantity of forums and the statistics that follow the listing.]
    
• People don't like being required to obtain a Windows Live ID.
   
• There are ways in which the MSDN Forums don't work very well (the RSS feeds do not show posts on threads, the alerts system doesn't identify the Forum, and there are other glitches).
    
• It is Microsoft operating in a very Microsoft-centric place in a very Microsoft-centric way.
    
• People working on interoperability of products are hesitant to have public conversations about it.
    
• Achievement of interoperability is a private matter and is tightly held to protect product differentiation and competitive advantage.
    
• Interoperability is seen as a necessary evil and only dealt with under duress if at all.
    
• Developers presume their tools and the products they use are interoperable and support interoperability by default, addressing integration problems bilaterally when they arise.
     
• Interoperability is an externality and everyone wants someone else to deal with it at no cost to them?

I could hand-wring further.  I am not surprised that people are protective of their efforts to exploit interoperability (or not), and maybe that's all there is to it.  And maybe, like me, people are having difficulty figuring out how to begin an useful discussion in the midst of their more pressing "get our stuff working" concerns.

So, rather than rend my clothing and wail dramatically, I need to figure out how to be patient here and also find ways to contribute that encourages the participation of others.   I'm frustrated by that, yet what else is there to do?

One calibration point: In a web search on "interoperability" I notice that Microsoft announcements are prominent, followed by standards-development activities, government initiatives, with consortia and academic activities as well.  Along with some companies that promote interoperability as a business or product focus, there are some odd links to organizations having the word in their name but whose only actions to foster interoperability are apparently rooted in a belief that interoperability is an automatic benefit of killing Microsoft in the European Union.  My general impression is that activities tend to be focused and industry based, involving big players.  I wonder if Technorati will come out differently?

[update 2008-04-16T16:01Z: My Technorati search for use of the tag "interoperability" did find a gem that was unknown to me:

Sam Rosenbalm: The Challenges of Interoperability.  (web log post) Microsoft on ISVs, msdn.com, 2008-04-15.  This post ties in the Microsoft-supported Interoperability Vendor Alliance as a pro-active forum for establishing and confirming interoperability at various levels.  Rosenbalm also exhorts readers to take advantage of the Interoperability Forum.

My inclination had been to dismiss the IVA as an advocacy or business-alliance sort of organization.  I under-estimated how much there is active support for interoperability arrangements.  I'm unsure how the identified "Interoperability Labs" work at this point.  Of course, all of these arrangements have Microsoft technology involved in some way.  I don't mind that so much.  I would like to see where there are counterparts for the other major suppliers in our industry, such as Sun and IBM and also any sort of open-source coalition.  I am interested in the constructive cases as opposed to victim-centric ones that presume interoperability as an automatic outcome of destruction of any dominant player or business model.]

 
Comments:

 
Dennis, one possibly fruitful thread might be to start a conversation about the many levels of interoperability, perhaps starting with work practice and going deeper into middleware and system support. Kind of like a network stack, except starting from the top - from the world of work practice and process.

Langdon Winner pointed out that there are three aspects of technology: apparatus, technique, and organization. Perhaps this kind of description is helpful for interoperability.

-Bill

# posted by  Bill Anderson: 16 April, 2008 10:14

 

 
Dennis, thanks for the insightful post. Sorry it took a week to comment. On the Document Interoperability Initiative - there is a lot of work going on now to expand the scope of these engagements. I will be updating my blog with some more details this week with details on upcoming events. Next week at Interop Las Vegas we will also be discussing some specific efforts that we are kicking off in response to feedback we have already received in the Boston and Seoul events. Finally, we will be launching a new page on www.microsoft.com/interop that will more formally document these activities moving forward. I look forward to discussing this further to get your feedback on how we can make these events (and the overall initiative) more useful for the ISV and Developer communities.

# posted by  Craig Kitterman: 22 April, 2008 00:56

 

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