Standards at IBM

Why choose IBM for Standards?

All around the world, businesses, governments and institutions are investing to reduce costs, drive innovation and transform their infrastructure. The economic downturn has intensified this trend, as leaders seek not simply to repair what is broken, but to prepare for a 21st Century economy.

Because IBM understands open standards bring value to your business

Choice - The choice I make today doesn’t limit the choices I can make in the future.
Flexibility – I can connect to internal departments and external partners that made different technology choices.
Skills – I can find skilled resources that understand these solutions.
Speed
- - I can build new solutions that involve multiple hardware and software platforms quickly.
- - I can adjust to changing business parameters (new opportunities, new partners, new employees) quickly.

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The IBM Standards Policy

IBM supports the consistent and fair application of standards development practices for all stakeholders, whether they be consumer, governmental, commercial, or open source, in emerging and mature economies alike. IBM does now, and will continue, to adhere to the following principles, informing IBM's participation in the standards community with integrity, innovation and good faith.

Because IBM's standards participation policy is grounded in a set of principles:

Encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.
Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, protected from undue influence.
Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure that open software interoperability standards are freely available and implementable.
Help drive the creation of clear, simple and consistent intellectual property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and business decisions.
Participate in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.

IBM commitment to accessibility standards efforts

IBM believes that accessibility of information technology (IT) is an important issue that is growing in significance and relevance in many business domains. As an organization we have voluntarily been a leader in accessibility for many years but we are now seeing the emergence of regulations that require or encourage IT products and services to be accessible to people with disabilities. IBM supports the spirit and intent of regulatory activity that creates an inclusive environment with respect to the use of IT but we believe that these regulations should be objective, attainable and standards-based to provide a common set of base requirements that all vendors can work toward.