11. What are industry consortia

Many aspects of ICT standardization are not addressed directly by formal standards bodies, but are covered by fora (e.g. W3C for the Web and the IETF for the Internet). Other industry consortia and trade organizations do not primarily aim at producing formal standards, and many times set out to address or resolve only a limited number of specific issues. Usually they have a lifespan between 5 and 15 years, as their activities tend to terminate once their original standardization goals have been accomplished. Despite the less formal character of the industry standards they produce, their focus on specific market segments often proves to be an efficient way for generating critical mass among stakeholders, necessary for successfully completing standardization processes.

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See also

  1. How do standardization processes work
  2. What are formal standards organizations
  3. Do formal standards organizations always produce formal standards

Created by Bart Brusse & Rigo Wenning
last updated $Date: 2006/11/03 13:56:16 $