Microsoft, Oracle and GIC initiate the Greek Interoperability Council, in Athens

The "Interoperability Day" co-organised by the Greek Interoperability Centre, 9th June 2010

The Greek Interoperability Centre (GIC), Microsoft Innovation Centre and Oracle Hellas organised the "Interoperability Day for the Private and Public Sector", on Future Internet Digital Services, in order to promote international interoperability standards in the Greek Public and Private Sector, towards new digital public services.

<- On the left: J.Psarras, T,Tzakri, Y. Charalabidis and W. Grommen in GIC Day opening


During the day, representatives of public administration, IT industry and research centres discussed about strategy, actions and impact of Future Internet services for governments and businesses.  Keynore speeches, after introduction by Prof. John Psarras, NTUA were as following:

Theodora Tzakri (pictured, right) Vice Minister of the Greek Ministry Interior, responsible for Electronic Governance, talked on the new framework for eGovernance and Interoperability in Greece, announcing more than 10 specific actions and initatitives on fiber infrastructures, base registries, service delivery channels, interoperability standards, open government in local administration and the overall target of having all major G2C services in level-5 (pro-active and personalised)

Yannis Charalabidis, Manager of the Greek Interoperability Centre and Ass. Prof. in the University of Aegean in Samos, spoke on world-class examples for policy making, service transformation, open governance and interoperability science, with a note to the "interoperabilty ROI" within crisis. Microsoft Interoperability Council, FhG FOKUS Germany-Online plan and eID, the ENSEMBLE project on interoperability science base were among the highlights.

This first session also included:

- Wilfried Grommen (pictured, left), Regional Technology Officer, Central and Eastern Europe, Microsoft, delivering a talk on cloud infrastructure and open standards for governments.

- Theodore Karounos, Consultant to the Greek Prime Minister, on the Greek OpenGov.gr initiative and interoperability outlook.

- Yota Paparidou, Greek ICT Industry Association, on the enterprise interoperability needs of SME's  

- Ingo Prestel (pictured right, bottom), Senior Manager Public Sector - EMEA, ORACLE, described the multi-fold interoperability offering of Oracle, relying on open standards, common infrastructures and Fusion middleware.

In the second part of the day, Dimitris Askounis, Ass.Prof NTUA and researchers from the Greek Interoperability Centre, together with collaborating organisations and companies, showcased innovative scenarios for automated government, seamless security and identity management, semantic interoperability and coordinated process management.

Within the panel discussion, journalist Yannis Rizopoulos dicussed "the next day in interoperability" with a pool of experts from the Greek Market:

- Panos Theodosopoulos, Public Sector Director, Microsoft Hellas
- George Bourmas, DB & Options Sales Consulting Manager, Oracle
- Nikos Karamolegos, National Bank of Greece
- Yannis Papidis, IT Applications Operations Director, OTE

The establishment of the Greek Interoperability Council was announced, aiming at coordinating interoperability-related efforts. Establishing members include representatives from Aegean University, NTUA-DSSL, AUEB-ELTRUN, Microsoft, Oracle, Singular Logic, ATC, Greek Geeks, HSE and Piraeus Bank.

See all the presentations and announcements at:

http://www.iocenter.eu/news--events/events/iopday.aspx

In the Executive Interoperability Council, at Microsoft Redmond

The Microsoft Executive Interoperability Council annual meeting was held in Microsoft Headquarters in Redmont, Seattle.    More than 20 CEO's and CIO's together with top researchers and academics joined Microsoft leading executives in two days of presentations and discussions around interoperability issues.
The agenda included the "hottest"  interoperability challenges and solutions in cloud, social media, enterprise systems and services for the connected and mobile world.

In the picture below, Yannis Charalabidis among the invited experts in the EIC, which from Europe also included representatives of Fraunhofer FOKUS (Germany) and NCC (UK).