[ih] Quantifying OSI

[Tom Lyon]

Anyone else remember the Enterprise Network Event - 1988 in Baltimore?
It was the peak of hype for the MAP/TOP flavor of OSI, complete with IEEE
802.4.
Sun announced such a product there.  Don't know if we ever sold any, but it
got us past the dreaded corporate check-lists.

https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/section/14.10/Enterprise-Network-Event-(OSI)-June/

On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 2:22 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Yes, there was *enormous* expenditure by major companies worldwide that
> thought OSI was the key to the future. IBM had people working on SNA/OSI
> integration (including marketing vapourware), both in the US (Research
> Triangle Park) and Europe (La Gaude). DEC (mainly at Littleton, MA)
> invested many millions in DECNET Phase V. Boeing also spent millions, I'm
> sure; I have no knowledge about GM. Untold numbers of companies spent both
> marketing and development millions under the influence of US-GOSIP,
> UK-GOSIP, European Commission policy, etc. Not to mention startups who
> thought OSI was an enormous future opportunity. I imagine that this was
> largely limited to North America, Western Europe and Japan, but it
> certainly included a lot more than sending people to meetings. I have no
> idea how to estimate the total but I suspect the correct unit is probably
> the gigadollar.
>
> The emerging national research and education networks in Europe also spent
> large fractions of their budgets on OSI preparedness - probably much less
> money than industry was spending, but real enough, between about 1985 and
> the early 1990s. The same went for NASA and DoE in the US.
>
> Standards goers and their fine lunches and dinners were probably quite a
> small fraction of the real total cost.
>
> Regards/Ngā mihi
>     Brian Carpenter
>
> On 12-May-26 08:43, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> > Our company (Epilogue Tech.) was involved with ISO/OSI mostly via the
> > MAP and TOP efforts by General Motors and Boeing.
> >
> > Those gatherings tended to be somewhat well attended, although I don't
> > think many of the attendees were people who actually implemented things.
> >
> >           --karl--
> >
> > On 5/11/26 3:46 AM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> >> That would be hard to calculate for the US. There were 5 OSI main
> committees each with 15 - 20 or more participants in various subgroups. In
> the US, US corporations paid for the time and travel of their participants.
> Some companies (IBM, Honeywell, ATT, etc) would have multiple participants
> in the same committee. There were multiple US meetings between major
> international meetings every 9 months and international sub-group meetings
> between the 9 month major meetings.
> >>
> >> The cost was all paid by the companies participating. In addition,
> there were 802 meetings that were feeding into the OSI work. This was
> especially true of how network management was gotten off the dime to get
> around IBM stonewalling. All other 802 standards were process by an ISO
> committee, because some countries saw IEEE as a US organization.
> >>
> >> I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at how many people or companies were
> participating from the US. The Europeans did complain sometimes abut the
> large US delegations to the meetings.
> >>
> >> Take care,
> >> John Day
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On May 10, 2026, at 23:53, Carl Malamud via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi -
> >>>
> >>> I’m trying to quantify the size of the OSI efforts. I’ve seen the 25
> >>> million ECU investment by the EU, and have some pointers to US
> government
> >>> efforts. Has anybody tried to collect these numbers?
> >>>
> >>> Also very interested in non-monetary indicators. I have easy access to
> >>> number of IETF participants and count the traffic on mailing lists. Any
> >>> similar metrics for OSI? The best indicator so far is “many fine
> lunches
> >>> and dinners” but surely there has to be something more scientific.
> >>>
> >>> With best regards,
> >>>
> >>> Carl
> >>> --
> >>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>> -
> >>> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>