Big guns team up for Web Services
Big guns team up for Web Services
It could be the technological equivalent of planets aligning. Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems have formed an alliance to push the development and adoption of Web Services. The three have released three new specifications for development and usage of Web Services, and Australia should benefit.
The deal and specification is described by Microsoft as a way to define and create business processes in Web Services. IBM's WSFL and Microsoft's XLANG will be replaced by the new BPEL4WS specification, which is a merger of the two. The deal follows an announcement by the two giants in February when they created the Web Services Interoperability Organisation and the security specification which followed in April.
Dr Kevin McIsaac, a program director for Meta Group said, "IBM sees Microsoft as a competitor, but they have learnt they cannot drive the structure themselves, they need to partner." He added, "This really is what people are looking for."
Laurence Cole, managing director of BEA Systems in Australia said, "It broadens the scope and availability of Web Services."
BEA's inclusion is good news for the company and the adoption of non Java based Web Services. BEA has a firm foot in the Java and J2EE camp, and has worked closely with Sun in the development of J2EE. "This deal doesn't mean we are stepping back from our relationship with Sun and Java," Mr Cole said.
Business Process Execution Language is a programming language that defines how different Web Services accomplish a single task. The flow of tasks is described by the language. WS-Coordination is the second of the three languages and describes how a process is managed to achieve the task. The third language, WS-transaction allows users of Web Services to monitor the success or failure of each transaction. All three XML based languages are collectively termed BPEL4WS.
All three companies have stated that they will submit the languages to a standards body, but which body has yet to be decided. "There are a lot of simple Web Services that people are trying to do. Now we will get an acceleration of the more complex systems," Dr McIsaacs said. In a survey Dr McIsaacs and Meta Group carried out in Australia they found that only 10 per cent of respondents were using Web Services, but a healthy 60 per cent are conducting a pilot or assessment.
Dr McIssacs believes the deal is a positive sign of maturity in the IT industry. "Ten years ago you would come up with something proprietary, you made the pie and you tried to own it all. This is a refreshing time for IT," he said.
He describes Web Services as a much bigger pie and to succeed these companies need to collaborate to make the pie and ensure that they get to own a large slice of it. IBM's relationship with Microsoft, he believes is an example of a company learning from the mistakes of others, notably Sun Microsystems.
Sun and Java are not out of the Web Services game though. BEA and IBM are well placed as supporters of both systems. Java will, according to Dr McIsaacs, be a strong Web Services platform, but Sun may not be the beneficiary.
"Sun have missed the Web Services wave! The Sun software people see it as Java versus Web Services. But you cannot write Sun off." He did say that Sun was in danger of being the next Xerox and creating great technologies such as the Graphic User Interface (GUI) and for Sun Java. "Sun has the ideas, but BEA have capitalised far them far better," he said.
Gartner has given its backing to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), which is a key component to the .Net Web Services initiative, saying, "It offers the clearest value proposition in providing immediate, robust interoperability for data formats." The research group found that Web Services implementations have, so far, not been used for any initiative that needs to be secure.