(Boston, MA) –The OASIS Customer Information Quality (CIQ) Technical Committee announced that it has accepted the submission of CRML, the XML vocabulary specification that defines customer relationships. Originally developed by MSI Business Solutions Pty. Ltd., CRML provides an open, application- and vendor-independent method for describing any type of customer relationship. The OASIS CIQ Technical Committee plans to adopt CRML into its family of customer information specifications including xCIL and xNAL, which define unique customer characteristics.

"Up until now, the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee has concentrated on defining standards to describe characteristics of a customer, such as name, address, phone number, e-mail, etc. Now with CRML, we are able to describe relationships between customers from a business and personal point of view," said Ram Kumar of MSI, chair of the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee. "Because CRML uses xCIL and xNAL as the basis for its vocabulary, it provides the third and final specification needed to identify all aspects of customer information."

Under the CRML standard, a customer can be a person or an organization. CRML accommodates complex customer relationships including person-to-person, person-to-business, and business-to-business.

"The rapid adoption of e-business has created a new world of interoperability between organizations, systems, processes, platforms, tools, and, most importantly, data," commented George Langley, director and founder of MSI Business Solutions Pty.Ltd., a sponsor member of OASIS. "To ensure reliability and success, it is necessary to define standards that enable interoperability of data before we even start to think about how other entities can interoperate. A standard way of defining customer relationships and customer information is essential for interoperability to occur. CRML is a major step towards achieving this."

"CRML extends the capabilities of the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee beyond standardizing the description of a customer's characteristics to include their business and personal relationships. By enabling the capture of non-address customer data, such as communication devices, e-mail, personal details, etc., CRML may enhance the value of ebXML as a robust standard," said Marcus Goncalves, CTO of Virtual Access Networks. "As a member of this OASIS technical committee, I'm pleased with the results we achieved. CRML not only helps improve the interoperability of XML-based data and applications – mainly eCRM and Web services – it can also enhance UDDI's directory services functionality by providing a global standard for name and address data."

David R.R. Webber of XML Global, another member of the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee agreed, adding, "We intend to keep CRML as a separate but related standard to xCIL and xNAL. By doing this, we see CRML fitting into ebXML and possibly other areas such as UDDI and W3C work."