The economics of Information Technologies Standards &

This research investigates the problem of Information Technologies Standards or Recommendations from an economical point of view. In our competitive economy, most enterprises adopted standardization’s processes, following recommendations of specialized Organisations such as ISO (International Organisation for Standardization), W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and ISOC (Internet Society) in order to reassure their customers. But with the development of new and open internet standards, different enterprises from the same sector fields, decided to develop their own IT standards for their activities. So we will hypothesis that the development of a professional IT standard required a network of enterprises but also a financial support, a particular organizational form and a precise activity to describe. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis and understand how professional organise themselves for developing and financing IT standards, we will take the Financial IT Standards as an example. So after a short and general presentation of IT Standards for the financial market, based on XML technologies, we will describe how professional IT standards could be created (nearly 10 professional norms or recommendations appear in the beginning of this century). We will see why these standards are developed outside the classical circles of standardisation organisations, and what could be the “key factors of success” for the best IT standards in Finance. We will use a descriptive and analytical method, in order to evaluate the financial support and to understand these actors’ strategies and the various economical models described behind. Then, we will understand why and how these standards have emerged and been developed. We will conclude this paper with a prospective view on future development of standards and recommendations.