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Leaders of the Web services pack

Vendors are struggling to secure the coveted pole position in the race to deliver a viable services framework

By James R. Borck, InfoWorld, 09/28/01

Technology leaders have high expectations that Web services will meet a broad variety of goals -- everything from cross-enterprise integration to reducing development costs -- and their desire to explore is keen, according to our 2001 InfoWorld Web Services Survey. But except for some early rudimentary adoption, little practical application of Web services is yet in circulation.

When asked which vendor is likely to match needs with solutions in the transition to Web services, our survey respondents place Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun nearly neck and neck, which accurately reflects the race under way. All four are leading providers of Web services frameworks, adopting support of Web services standards and capabilities into their development tools, application servers, and server software.

For vendors to meet customers' Web services expectations, they will need leadership, and they must address many of the outstanding issues still impeding Web services adoption. Fortunately, vendors are laying impressive groundwork for true Web services interoperability.

Microsoft casts its .Net

Without a doubt, Microsoft has played one of the more prominent roles in service-oriented architecture development. Our survey results consistently placed the .Net strategy as the most recognized effort in Web services.

By founding the development of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) as well as adopting XML into its .Net server architecture, Microsoft has left little room for ambiguity about the importance it places on Web services in the future of distributed computing.

The .Net programming model, including a new version of ASP (Active Server Pages) for SOAP-based service delivery, will help Web services supplant the COM (Component Object Model)-family architecture of Microsoft's heritage.

Given the comprehensiveness of Microsoft's .Net vision, the delays in releasing a complete Web services framework are only modestly surprising. Many components are still under development, including essential tools for building and testing Web services.

Issues that may eventually affect a company's adoption of Microsoft's vision include the software giant's poor track record of maintaining, rather then extending standards. And that Microsoft discontinued support for Java in favor of the competitive CLR (Common Language Runtime) doesn't get the company off to a good start.

Although Microsoft's reluctance to play well with other platforms may be boxing the company into a corner with developers, the vendor is still a major force in the promotion of Web services.

HP takes NetAction

Hewlett-Packard pioneered the Web services idea, creating the Java-based e-Speak in early 1999. HP once held visionary prominence but has since been playing catch-up to newer luminaries seeking broader standards for services adoption.

This can be attributed in part to HP's early desire to forge a rather close-minded ideal of Web services. With e-Speak, HP championed its own RPC (Remote Procedure Call) rather than SOAP, and proprietary directory technology rather than UDDI (Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration).

For more enterprise computing news, visit InfoWorld. Story copyright InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

 

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