Unlike many of the papers included here, the subject of this paper does not readily submit to a rigorous academic analysis. Issues are argued by example rather than by proof. To many vendors, the worth of the OGC lies in its recognition of key commercial realities. Since the OGC does concern itself with implementation and because it is trying to use the best of emerging technologies but is not tied to one particular platform, it faces many of the same problems that a vendor encounters. It is familiar with the compromise and pragmatism required to make progress. Consequently it provides one of the few forums where these issues are discussed.

Interoperability is one of the key concerns to develop a business network based on geographical information, in particular for data derived from satellite-based earth observation.
In the European context, a very scattered scenario of the participants involved in the end-to-end provision of a service based on geographc informaion is observed:
- satellite operators and data providers
- data integrators
- application providers
- data interpretation service providers

An interoperable and homogenous access to the available services and data is required to minimize the entry cost of service provision initiatives that are deriving information from the assembly and/or analysis of lower-level information.

Such an interoperability is required within a high performance and cost-efficient distributed infrastructure that allows to preserve the high value of timely information.

Past standardisation activities were mainly limited to satellite-based earth observation community. Numerous isolated standardisation activities were performed by the CCSDS, others - on a more blobal context - by the CEOS protocol task team.
In this context the IMS protocol was used for the CINTEX interoperability experiment and recently CEOS approved version 2.4 of the new Catalogue interoperability Protocol (CIP), which also includes extensions for interoperable ordering.

CIP is a Z39.50 based protocol and the latest version has been harmonised with the GEO profile as promoted by the FGDC. This event is a first indication of a move towards the required interoperability between the world of Geographical information systems (GIS) and Earth Observation.

With OpenGIS the GIS world on their side have started a big industrial initiative on a CORBA-based interoperability, which is closely followed by FGDC and the members of CEOS. There is a big hope, that in the medium term we can have a common interoperable basis between GIS and Earth Observation data with the objective to build up a distributed and interoperable 'production infrastructure'. This can be the basis for geographical information services incorporating satellite-derived real-time information that can be offered to final customers.

The European Space Agency sees a big opportunity in this growing market and is following and executing various initiatives to reach this objective. However, there is a full awareness that the medium-term business process will be driven by the GIS community which can be expected to become a driving force in the achievement of global interoperability.