Simon Awde, Chairman

Accelerating development and deployment of digital information and communications technologies is driving a worldwide economic and social revolution.

The internet-based global knowledge society promises vast benefit, provided we adhere to certain fundamental principles. One of the most important of these is the principle of full interoperability among the products and services of all enterprises wishing to compete on the merits in this vast and growing global marketplace.

ECIS was created in 1989 to champion the principle and practice of interoperability among competing vendors in the European market, at a time when its central importance for future growth, innovation, employment and consumer benefit was not widely understood or embraced.

Today, we all need to exchange information and remain in touch with others on a permanent basis. This demand for permanently networked communications capability among most digital products and services has made full interoperability an essential market condition for open, dynamic competition. Dynamic competition in turn drives the ICT innovation that produces consumer choice among an inexhaustible wellspring of new products and services.

ECIS welcomes the support and participation of all who share our determination to pursue the benefits of non-discriminatory market access and full industry-wide interoperability in the European ICT marketplace.