Infosys TechCompass

Open-source standards

Trend 14: Open-source becomes critical for technology standards and innovation

Open technology standards have become critical in resolving complexity stemming from ever-expanding technology sprawl. Several open-source foundations are leading the development of standards and aggressively pushing their adoption.

Several new foundations have led the evolution of open-source, vendor-neutral standards and technologies. Internet Architecture Board, earlier known as Internet Configuration Control Board, is one of the initial bodies to provide architecture oversight and manage internet standards. Then emerged other bodies such as Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Business Process Modeling Notation, Center for Internet Security, and Open Web Application Security Project. Even the emerging technologies standards are evolving in open-source foundations. For example, Sovrin is establishing a governance framework for self-sovereign identity on the internet, a hyper ledger-based identity management solution. Similarly, Open Networking Foundation promotes open-networking and software-defined programmable networks.

By creating interoperable, vendor-neutral ecosystems, open standards help prolong technologies' lifecycle, reduce wastage, and save the planet. They encourage healthy competition and reduce the overall costs of an enterprise solution.

A leading multinational automotive manufacturer faced several challenges with a decades-old legacy application. The system suffered frequent business disruptions, nonintuitive user experience, and high costs. In association with Infosys, the company modernized the system using open-source, cloud-native technologies (Node.JS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Elastic, etc.). As a result, the company could deliver 10% effort saving for end users, less than 0.5% downtime, and saved US$50,000 in annual costs.

Open-source standards

Trend 15: Open industry standards gain more recognition

Industry-specific standards have emerged recently. Industry players are building open standards and joint solutions to accelerate the innovation for specific industry use cases. Foundations and consortiums in all major industries are trying to evolve the next generation of solutions in their respective fields. The most wide-ranging industry initiatives are happening in the financial sector, with multiple consortiums contributing to several areas. The banking architecture network is leading the charge in digital banking; open banking projects are pioneering open banking standards and concepts; and the fintech open-source foundation is focusing on open-source software and standards. Similarly, in the energy sector, LF Energy is transitioning to robust, secure open-source solutions that help reduce carbon footprint. Open Group Open Subsurface Data Universe is developing open standards and common data architecture to transition to a lower carbon future.

In the telecom domain, TMForum enables service providers, technology vendors, and system integrators to develop open APIs and frameworks and drive innovation to accelerate digital transformation. Anuket is another project concentrating on developing reference architectures, conformance programs, and tools to transform network services.

Health Level 7 (HL7)/Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources develop and maintain HL7 open specifications for interoperability in healthcare. Similarly, the open manufacturing platform drives innovation across the manufacturing community and value chain to build platform-agnostic solutions, open standards, and technologies to enable smart manufacturing.

A FinTech startup in the working capital space partnered with Infosys to build a highly scalable and reliable account aggregator platform to disburse loans faster. Infosys' Banking API Platform helped accelerate the development of the solution, which implemented RBI AA open banking specification using an open-source technology stack to deliver 50% faster time-to-market.