Call for participation in the IETF ESDS BOF

Hello,

This is a call for participation in the IETF ESDS BOF session to be held during the 71st IETF gathering in Philadelphia, PA, USA

There are important changes happening in supply chain industry standards that can affect your business. Decisions are currently being made on network communication standards that could radically change the way you trade data with your supply chain partners.

Current supply chain technologies consist of point to point data exchange between partners and thus limit communication of business critical data in cases where disparate backend systems are being used by loosely coupled supply chain partners. Discovery Services are a secure mechanism needed to enable supply chain partners with little or no prior business relationships to selectively exchange tracking (and referral) data for objects they are handling in the supply chain. An IETF working group would be tasked with developing a standardized mechanism for this type of data sharing that uses Internet technology and would include attention to issues surrounding security, data formats and scalability amongst others.

Some of the issues the group would address include developing discovery service support for all open supply chain identifiers - including both legacy identifiers and newer standards around RFID; the ability to handle supply chain exceptions and optimize routing through selective 2-way supply chain visibility; enabling limited visibility to regulators and customs agents as required; and attain better cost metrics by using the internet to securely exchange selected data while conforming to current Internet infrastructure architecture.

The primary goal of this BOF is to see whether there is enough interest to form a working group around developing a standard for Discovery Services that addresses these and other issues. An IETF working group would potentially provide a larger open community to facilitate discussion and participation of all interested parties.

The details of the BOF as as follows:

Date: Monday, March 10, 2008
Time: 1:00 PM
Duration: 2 hours
Place: Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, 1201 Market Street
Room Name: Breakout Room
Information on registration, and accommodation:
http://www3.ietf.org/meetings/71-IETF.html

The ESDS discussion archive can be viewed here:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/esds/

We hope to see you there.

Maged Girgis