People love to form groups. In the movies, all Mickey Rooney had to do was say, “Hey, let’s put on a show!” and a few minutes later the group would put on a show with Judy Garland cutting loose with a well-rehearsed song and dance number that would put a Broadway show to shame. In life, groups are a bit more trouble. There are meetings, meetings about meetings and meetings about meetings about meetings. Nevertheless, some groups work. Our industry seems to thrive on groups. What is amazing is how many of them work. Remember when IBM came out with the PS/2 PC and included the PS/2 bus which required other PC clone vendors to pay royalties to IBM if they used the bus? It was an attempt by IBM to siphon a little revenue off of its competitors. Its chief PC rival at the time, Compaq led a group with a more open, and cheaper, standard. The group worked and IBM was eventually forced to offer systems using the rival’s technology. Another successful group was the 10 Gigabit Ethernet organization. After the group met its objectives, all that is left is a website detailing its success. The Linear Tape-Open (LTO) group is another example. IBM, HP and Certance formed the group several years ago with a defined set of objectives for tape backup technology. IBM and Certance have already announced their LTO version 3 drives and HP will do the same shortly. The group has been so successful, and moved so quickly, they have to get together and come up with a new strategy beyond the LTO version 4 which is expected in another 18 months. That’s not quite as fast as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland could put together a show, but it’s not bad. Technology Industry