Much like our early decisions on interoperability, we also decided early-on that we need vibrant dialog with end users as well, and foster an end-user community to provide ongoing input regarding their priorities and concerns. This has proven to be critical for two reasons: First, to keep us focused on the most important issues, and second, to be able to work with an engaged group of business end users willing to try out our ideas and make sure they work in practice.

To this end, we launched our Customer Forum Series, a series of events in which senior IT executives are invited to hear about open source solutions and sound off on their successes and challenges. The input has been very valuable, and even more valuable are the relationships we have built and ongoing dialog that continues to be mutually beneficial for them and the OSA membership alike.

But the most exciting outreach activity is our ability to take our interoperability innovations, such as the Common Customer View and open-sourced interoperability components, directly to customers. Unisys and other integrators are doing this with the CCV, and some of the OSA's ISV members are planning this with individual components thereof. While serving to bring some revenue opportunity to the participating members (a nice payback for their investment in the OSA), more importantly, this will prove that these work in practice, in real-world settings, and not just in our own labs and demo environments. This way, we can credibly drive thought leadership throughout the whole industry based on real-world experience.

Customer input has proven to be the lifeblood of the OSA. It has kept us focused on what's most important, and also helped guide our priorities going forward, as described in our next segment...