What Open Applications Group does

Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGi) is a US-based non-profit standards development organization founded in 1995 (incorporated in the United States, headquartered in Atlanta, GA) that creates open integration standards and ontology frameworks for enterprise interoperability. Its portfolio centers on three core assets: connectSpec (formerly OAGIS), a canonical business-message integration standard conformant to ISO 15000-5 and ISO 5054-1 covering ERP/commerce, sales/logistics, and smart manufacturing domains; connectCenter, a browser-based schema and API generator co-developed with NIST that exports BIEs in JSON Schema, OpenAPI v3, XML Schema, Excel, and CSV; and IOF (Industrial Ontologies Foundry) reference ontologies built on BFO, spanning supply chain, maintenance, production planning, biopharma, MTConnect, systems engineering, and ML lifecycle domains. Supporting offerings include connectKits (use-case-specific integration bundles), Chem eStandards for chemical/agriculture messaging, and active working groups that govern roadmap and releases.

OAGi operates a community-led, membership-based business model. Connect Membership is sold in Basic, Pro, and Enterprise tiers (Enterprise up to $30,000/year at >$250M revenue, including a Policy Board seat and 10% training/consulting discount), and IOF Membership in Contributing and Governing tiers (Governing up to $30,000/year at >$10B revenue, including a Governance Board voting seat). Revenue is supplemented by direct training ($4,000-$5,000 virtual, $7,000-$9,000 on-site) and consulting services ($210/hour for members, $263/hour for non-members), with a bundled Quick Start discount of 30% on training when paired with consulting. Distribution is direct, global, and self-serve for cloud access, with on-premise deployment reserved for Pro/Enterprise tiers.

The organization serves enterprise manufacturers, system integrators, government agencies, and academic/research institutes that require semantic interoperability across heterogeneous ERP, MES, PLM, and supply-chain systems. Named adopters include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, AT&T Wireless, the U.S. Air Force, NIST, AstraZeneca, and MilliporeSigma, with hundreds of companies reported as standards users globally. OAGi is governed by a Policy Board, staffed by 1-10 employees per firmographic data, and maintains flagship strategic partnerships with NIST (co-development of connectCenter and joint working groups) and NIIMBL (biopharmaceutical manufacturing ontologies and the BMIC organizational unit established in 2023).

Name

Open Applications Group

Legal name

Open Applications Group, Inc.

Website

https://oagi.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

1995

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Open Applications Group (OAGi) is a US non-profit standards organization founded in 1995 that develops open enterprise integration standards (connectSpec) and industrial reference ontologies (IOF) for manufacturers, system integrators, and government, monetizing via tiered memberships, training, and consulting.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Enterprise Integration Standards and Ontology Software

NAICS

Computer Systems Design and Related Services (5415), Other Computer Related Services (541519)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Membership Organizations (8600)

akta.pro primary industry

B2B/EDI & Partner Integration (BPAMAOAJ)

akta.pro secondary industry

Technical Enablement & Adoption Services (Change Management, Adoption, Champions) (BPAEANAC)

Keywords

• Enterprise integration standards
• Open interoperability specifications
• Industrial ontology frameworks
• Schema and API generation
• Standards development organization

Headquarters

HQ city

Marietta

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Connect Membership Dues: Annual and monthly membership fees based on organization revenue size. Three tiers: Basic, Pro, Enterprise with increasing benefits. Basic provides cloud account and access to standards. Pro adds connectCenter On-Prem and working group leadership. Enterprise adds Policy Board seat and 10% training/consulting discount.
2. IOF Membership Dues: Annual calendar year membership with monthly or annual payment options. Two tiers: Contributing and Governing. Contributing provides access to Technical Oversight Board meetings, working group participation, and event attendance. Governing adds voting seat on Governance Board.
3. Training Services: Connect Classroom Training and IOF Training offered both in-person and virtually. In-person training ranges $7,000-$9,000. Virtual training ranges $4,000-$5,000. 'Quick Start' combo packages bundle training with consulting at 30% discount.
4. Consulting Services: Expert consulting for organizational adoption, coding, project strategy, and implementation. Rates are $210/hour for members and $263/hour for non-members. Includes best practices for connectSpec implementation, BOD development, mappings to EDI/MTConnect/QIF/STEP standards, and architectural guidance.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

Open Applications Group (OAGi) develops and maintains open enterprise integration standards, ontology frameworks, and supporting software tools for application-to-application (A2A) and business-to-business (B2B) interoperability. Its primary offerings are connectSpec, an ISO 15000-5 and ISO 5054-1 conformant canonical integration standard; connectCenter, a NIST-co-developed browser-based schema and API generator; and IOF reference ontologies for digital manufacturing built on BFO (Basic Formal Ontology). It sells access to these standards and tools through tiered membership programs and supplements revenue with paid training and consulting services.

Product overview

Open Applications Group (OAGi) offers a suite of interoperability standards and open-source software tools for enterprise integration. The core products are connectSpec (formerly OAGIS), a global interoperability standard conforming to ISO 15000-5 for business message exchange; connectCenter, a browser-based schema and API generator developed in collaboration with NIST; and IOF Ontologies, a suite of open reference ontologies for digital manufacturing built on BFO foundation. Additional offerings include connectKits for specific integration use cases, and various working groups developing domain-specific ontologies for supply chain, maintenance, biopharmaceuticals, production planning, MTConnect, systems engineering, and machine learning lifecycle. OAGi also maintains legacy Chem eStandards for chemical and agriculture industries.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• connectSpec: OAGi's primary interoperability standard, formerly known as OAGIS. A branding update used from 1995 to 2023. Conforms to ISO 15000-5 and ISO 5054-1.
• connectCenter
• IOF (Industrial Ontologies Foundry)
• connectKits
• Chem eStandards

Products and services

• connectSpec OAGi's primary interoperability standard (formerly OAGIS), conforming to ISO 15000-5 and ISO 5054-1, used by enterprises for canonical data exchange in ERP/commerce, sales/logistics, and smart manufacturing. Covers Price Lists, RFQ and Quote, Order Management, Compliance, Purchasing/Invoicing, Orders/Payments, Financials, Shipments, Routings, Tracking, Planning, Scheduling, Engineering, MES, Shop Floor, Inventory, Quality, and Warehouse Management.
• connectCenter Browser-based open-source tool for developing and managing data standards, creating standard profiles, and expressing profiles in JSON schema, Open API Spec v3, XML schema, Excel, Open Document Format, and CSV. Supports ISO 15000-5 and ISO 5054-1 compliant BIE development with state management and versioning. Co-developed with NIST.
• IOF Ontologies Suite of open, principles-based reference ontologies spanning digital manufacturing, including IOF Core ontology, Supply Chain, Maintenance, Production Planning, Product-Service System, MTConnect, Systems Engineering, Zero-Defect Manufacturing, and Biopharmaceutical ontologies. Built on BFO (Basic Formal Ontology) foundation and released under MIT and CC BY 4.0 licenses.
• connectKits Collection of resources (formerly Express Packs) targeted at defined integration use cases, containing overviews, process models in BPMN or UML Sequence form, connectCenter-profiled connectSpec message schemas as JSON Schema or XML Schema, sample instance messages, and OAS-compliant API specifications.
• Chem eStandards

Quantifiable outcome

• Reduces integration costs by eliminating point-to-point connections in favor of canonical hub-and-spoke pattern
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers15 records

Segments7 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core, flagship and minor.

• National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 24 June 2024NIIMBL and OAGi partnered to develop open-source biopharmaceutical manufacturing ontologies. NIIMBL contributed biopharmaceutical manufacturing ontology expertise and sponsors BMIC (Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry Council) within OAGi's IOF. Jointly released groundbreaking biopharma ontologies covering process parameters, equipment, quality attributes, recipes, and materials. Roger Hart serves as NIIMBL Senior Fellow and Big Data Program Lead.
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)flagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerNIST researchers developed the proof-of-concept application (Score) that evolved into connectCenter. Ongoing strategic collaboration includes co-development of connectCenter, joint working groups (Flexible Supply Chain, Smart Manufacturing, IOF), and annual summits. NIST serves as co-lead for multiple IOF working groups including connectCenter WG (Dr. Hakju Oh) and IOF Core Ontology WG (Serm Kulvatunyou, Milos Drobnjakovic).
• Industry CommonsminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerIndustry Commons builds systems for accountable open innovation production value networks. Collaboration began informally through the Onto Commons project and evolved into formal collaboration. Industry Commons enables innovative solutions by combining existing industry capabilities.
• Digital Twin ConsortiumminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDigital Twin Consortium drives awareness, adoption, interoperability, and development of digital twin technology. connectSpec, connectCenter, and IOF Ontologies complement DTC resources to enable digital twin adoption.
• AltovaminorImplementation/ SI/ Consulting PartnerAltova provides specialized XML, JSON, SQL, and UML development tools. Partnership provides OAGi with Altova tools at no cost to support OAGi training events.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• OASIS Open: Open-standards consortium advancing interoperability specifications (e.g., UDDI, ebXML, AMQP). Highly comparable to OAGi as a non-profit developing canonical integration standards with broad industry working groups and ISO-submitted outputs.
• Object Management Group (OMG): Standards body known for CORBA, UML, BPMN, and Model-Driven Architecture specifications. Comparable to OAGi as a membership-driven non-profit producing widely adopted technical interoperability standards referenced by major enterprise software vendors.
• GS1: Global non-profit standards organization developing supply chain and B2B data exchange standards. Most direct peer to OAGi as both operate membership-funded standards bodies targeting manufacturing, supply chain, and trading-partner interoperability.
• ASAM (Association for Standardization of Automation and Measuring Systems): Non-profit standards developer for automotive/automation testing, measurement, and simulation. Comparable to OAGi in being a sector-focused non-profit SDO working with major OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers on interoperability standards.

Broad incumbents

• HL7 International: Healthcare-focused standards organization whose FHIR/HL7 v2 interoperability work is the closest analog to OAGi's connectSpec. While OAGi is moving into biopharma manufacturing, HL7 sets the dominant clinical-data interoperability reference, making it a relevant incumbent for adjacent use cases.
• W3C: International consortium developing web interoperability standards (RDF, OWL, SKOS) underpinning ontology frameworks. Relevant peer because OAGi's IOF ontologies are built on BFO-style foundations common to W3C semantic web outputs.
• MuleSoft (Salesforce): Enterprise integration platform (iPaaS) with its own canonical-message approach. Comparable as an alternative integration paradigm competing with open standards like connectSpec for the same enterprise workloads.

Others

• Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC): International non-profit developing geospatial interoperability standards. Tangentially comparable as a non-profit SDO with similar member-funded governance, working-group structure, and reference-implementation tooling ethos.

Regional players

• Digital Twin Consortium: Industry organization (under Object Management Group) advancing digital twin interoperability. Direct partnership counterparty to OAGi and a peer in shaping ontology and data-model standards for industrial use cases.

Emerging players

• Industrial Internet Consortium / ObjectStore (now Industry IoT Consortium): Industry consortium setting reference architectures for industrial IoT and smart manufacturing. Adjacent to OAGi's IOF Smart Manufacturing working group in addressing OT/IT semantic interoperability.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/OAGi
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/oagi/?viewAsMember=true
• Xx.com/oagi_standards

Compliance2 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Open Applications Group