Chris Makemson is a Data Communications Consultant with many years experience in the industry. He is primarily concerned with the application of data communication systems. He is able to work at the strategic level on policy, analysis, review and procurement and also at the detailed project level including both technical and project management for both large and small projects. He has experience at all stages of the project life cycle. Chris Makemson has worked across a wide range of sectors including government, military, financial and retail. He has a broad base of experience including not just technical work but also marketing and sales support for which he has received formal training. He is one of the leading figures in the UK involved with Open Systems standardisation having been associated with this work since 1977.
Chris Makemson's career has a strong theme running through it concerning many aspects of distributed interactive IT systems. In this context, interactive IT systems tend to provide an interface to the human user who is then included in the processing loop.
The distributed nature of the systems that he has been involved with since his time at Ford has meant that he has become involved with many aspects of data communications and it is in this context that his interest in interactive systems has developed.
His time in CAP was mainly concerned with the implementation of such systems. The two high points during this time were his involvement with the Reuters Foreign Exchange Dealing System and with the UK National EftPos system.
He managed the design and implementation of the dealing terminal concentrator for the Reuters Foreign Exchange Dealing System. This device concentrated terminal cluster controller traffic and was connected to a proprietary packet switched network which predated X.25. He became the development manager for the phase 2 dealing system. This system has been very successful and is a global one reaching out to all the major financial centres of the world. He spent over three years on this project.
For over a year he was one of two design managers for the National Electronic Funds Transfer at the Point of Sale project for a consortium of the major banks. Particular responsibility was for the design of the terminal communications system for potentially a very large terminal population (up to 250,000 terminals). For 6 months he was system test manager for this project.
It was natural that his deep interest in data communications would lead him into standardisation activities. The start of this coincided with the start of Open Systems standardisation around 1977 and has continued with diversification ever since. This has included standards for terminals, transaction processing, character sets, EftPos and interactive EDI. Until recently he was a leading figure in the European Workshop for Open Systems (EWOS) where he has managed a number of project teams. He was the chairman of a group in EWOS examining issues related to the use of the Internet and its specifications for the Global Information Infrastructure in Europe. He represented EWOS at the EPIC committee of the ICT Standards Board which is responsible for the handling of the recommendations of the High Level Strategy Group and the management of European Project on Information Infrastructure (EPII) projects.
In the development of the Information Society in Europe, a key criteria for success is the ability for systems to support the natural languages of their users. For this reason Chris Makemson has been active in CEN TC 304 (Multilingual Information Infrastructure) which besides character set issues is involved with other aspects of systems affected by cultural differences in Europe. With this background, he has assisted DGXIII with project review in the Language Engineering sector of the Telematics Application Programme.
As an independent contractor and consultant, Chris' implementation and standardisation activities have led naturally to the provision of strategic guidance and procurement guidance to large user organisations. The primary customers for this have been in the public sector. Thus he has been closely involved with the UK CCTA's Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) project and with the CEU DGIII European Procurement Handbook for Open Systems (EPHOS) project. The GOSIP project was organised centrally to provide procurement guidance to UK Government departments. The EPHOS project is intended to provide procurement guidance to the member states of the EU as well as to the CEU itself. Recently, GOSIP in the UK has been withdrawn in favour of EPHOS. For these two projects he helped to develop guidance for terminal systems, transaction processing and character sets. The Transaction Processing guidance paid particular attention to OSE aspects looking at the way in which major components could be identified using APIs and SIIs to segment system platforms along the lines of the OSE model developed in EWOS. This allows components or building blocks to be purchased as necessary from different suppliers and re-used as necessary. X/OPEN API and SII specifications played a significant role in this guidance.
In addition to this work for central government, Chris has provided strategic advice to specific procurement projects for user organisations in both the private and public sectors. This has included:
Procurement of standards based data communication systems needs to be complemented by issues of conformance and testing. This is an outgrowth not only of system/integration testing for implementations but also of the need to ensure a high probability of interoperability. Chris has therefore been active in the testing arena. This has included:
Chris has recently been involved in two EDI related projects. The first of these was within the CEU's TEDIS programme and concerned the unambiguous allocation of sender/recipient names. A framework and MoU was developed for the operation of naming registration authorities. The project was a necessary activity in the development of the infrastructure needed for the emergence of Open EDI. In particular it was needed to assist the development of security Certification Agencies. This initiative has spread to North America. Following on from this, he is now the rapporteur for a working group on identification and registration for the G7 theme project on a Global Marketplace for SMEs.
The second project sought to define an architecture for the development of a diverse communications infrastructure for the support of Interactive EDI. This diversity ranged from multi-point Interactive EDI with the use of Transaction Processing techniques to simpler point to point scenarios using both DCE and Internet environments. The work was heavily influenced by OSE principles and developed an extension of the X/Open Transaction Processing Model. Further APIs were identified in this model and this further enhanced the building block approach to the construction of systems. He managed this project.
Continuing the interactive access theme, Chris is currently managing a project for DGIII of the Commission investigating the standardisation requirements for on-line multimedia access to the cultural heritage in Europe. This includes within its scope requirements for data content/format standards, IPR protection (e.g. digital watermarking), access control, payment systems, multimedia technology and so on.