The objectives of this new service are:
- to catalyse the production of CAPE-OPEN components by removing the difficulties of achieving CAPE-OPEN-compatibility;
- to retain the services of key CAPE-OPEN experts in the vendor organisations
- to provide an added incentive for companies to join as full members.
This will be done by allocating a proportion of the CO-LaN budget to contracting service providers to provide consultancy on CAPE-OPEN compliance to component developers approved by the Management Board. Each Full Member will be able to nominate one component per year to receive this service, with the remaining consultancy budget being allocated by the Management Board. A Request for Bids has been launched and 5 bids received. So far, 4 have been approved and shortly the first contract, with AspenTech, is expected to be signed.
AspenTech provided a vendor’s view of the proposal and broadly supported its objectives. However, they felt that more is needed to be done to increase the usage of CAPE-OPEN facilities. The meeting agreed with this view and linked it to another discussion about encouraging more companies to become full members of CO-LaN.
A lively discussion then ensued about how to achieve these aims. Views ranged from one extreme that the user companies should make a much more substantial investment to accelerate developments, to the other extreme that the vendor companies should develop CAPE-OPEN as part of their normal product evolution. Some agreement was reached that vendor companies could help to make their customers aware of the benefits of CO-compliance and the advantages of CO-LaN membership, which would help ensure that their interests are included in CO-LaN development priorities.