OMG Forms Two Groups to Address Complex Regulatory Compliance Issues

Business Wire, May 10, 2005

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- OMG Regulatory Compliance Alliance (ORCA) and Regulatory Compliance SIG to Address the IT Impact of Regulatory Compliance Requirements

The Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)), today announced an initiative to help Chief Compliance Officers, IT directors, CFOs and Legal executives address the IT impact of the many regulatory compliance requirements.

Global firms are constrained by hundreds of government regulations, ranging from broad governance rules such as Sarbanes-Oxley and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to local privacy laws. Identifying all the appropriate laws for all geographic operating markets - and dealing with inconsistencies - is a daunting task for IT. Minimizing risk while maximizing the ROI on compliance projects requires a standards-based integrated approach to compliance management.

"We used to make a big distinction between regulated and unregulated industries, but today, virtually every enterprise is constrained by a combination of governance, privacy, security and environmental regulations. The pain is especially keen for companies that do business in multiple countries that frequently have conflicting regulatory requirements," said Adrian Bowles, Program Director, Regulatory Compliance at OMG. "The goal of the OMG Regulatory Compliance Alliance is to complement the OMG compliance standards effort by providing a forum for IT compliance research and education. Our program of original research and events is designed to help IT executives develop flexible, defensible, cost-effective and low-risk compliance solutions."

The Object Management Group (OMG) is launching initiatives designed to help IT compliance professionals manage these complex issues:

Standards: The OMG Regulatory Compliance SIG will leverage the OMG open, neutral standards process to develop standards for the rapid adoption of models supporting regulatory compliance in business processes. Members will define models for compliant business processes and best practices for adopting and maintaining compliant processes in the organization.

ORCA: The OMG Regulatory Compliance Alliance is a working group of OMG Members who are committed to developing, codifying, and promoting IT best practices for regulatory compliance. ORCA will conduct research projects on emerging compliance issues and trends, and deliver results in the form of webinars, white papers, etc. in support of the standards effort.

Repository: The OMG will develop a global repository of regulations that have a significant impact on IT. The repository will include a synopsis of relevant regulations and references to best practices and emerging standards. It will be available exclusively to OMG members.

"The OMG and its members are committed to building standards that address the complex IT and business process issues companies face on a daily basis," said Dr. Richard M. Soley, Chairman and CEO of OMG. "Our success in vertical markets such as healthcare, finance and life sciences is highly synergistic with regulatory compliance--the formation of ORCA and the Regulatory Compliance SIG add new depth to our coverage in these markets."

The OMG Regulatory Compliance SIG and ORCA will meet at the OMG Technical Meeting in Boston, Mass. the week of June 20-24, 2005. OMG is holding a limited-seating seminar entitled "Leveraging IT Standards for Regulatory Compliance Requirements," on June 21, 2005. To request an invitation to the seminar, or for more information on the OMG Regulatory Compliance SIG or ORCA please contact Ken Berk at kenberk@omg.org or visit http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/compliance.htm. For information about joining OMG, please visit www.omg.org or email us at info@omg.org.

About The OMG

With well-established standards covering software from design and development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the key to successful IT. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for the MDA(R), include the Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(R)) and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM(TM)). CORBA(R), the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments running today. Headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, the Object Management Group is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org.

Note to editors: MDA, Model Driven Architecture, OMG Logo, UML and CORBA are registered trademarks, and OMG, Object Management Group, MOF, MDA Logos, Unified Modeling Language and UML logo are trademarks, of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.