Interesting IBM developer works article:

Standards and specs: Early adopters

Follow the pitfalls and perks that come from adopting a standard before it becomes one

This is a rather hardware focused standards article, but there are some valid lessons to be gained.

Remember that standardization is about interoperability first and foremost. If competitiveness between prospective partners in a standardization effort sinks the standard, everybody loses.

Which is why open standards are so important.  There is a great difference between industry standards and open standards.  Industry standards are lead by companies who form loose partnerships with eachother when developing new product lines with the desire for interoperability.  Open standards are those lead by independent standards bodies, usually with open participation and vendor independence.  This doesn't mean that open standards sometimes don't suffer the results of vendor competition, if they are implemented inconsistently (thus breaking the standard for advantage).

Anyway, good article.  I attempted once, to explain the difference between Open Standards and Open Source, which may provide some relevant background to this topic. 

Xeon vs. Opteron Performance Benchmarks - QuickSand writes "Anand got his hands on some of Intel and AMD's enterprise processors including 4MB L3 Xeons, and put them to the test. Results were a little varied as 4-way Opteron systems seemed to fare the best, although dual Xeon configurations almost always beat dual Opterons. The exact benchmarks are here." slashdot.org I haven't followed hardware in a while, but it seems to me from reading AnandTech's article, that AMD Opteron's bus speed and performance, especially considering the clockspeed, smokes Intel's Xeon.