Shared Objective: Interoperability

The vendors,along with 50 other companies including Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, BEA Systems, Accenture, SAP, Compaq Computer and Intel,last week formed the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I). The group aims to teach solution providers how to use Web services across various operating environments, said Bob Sutor, IBM's director of e-business standards strategy.

Absent from the list of WS-I companies is Sun Microsystems, a major proponent of Web services and creator of the Java language. Marge Breya, a Sun vice president, said Sun supports Web services interoperability and is likely to join the group soon. Sutor said Sun was invited to join WS-I, whose membership is open to any company interested in participating.

For now, WS-I's members will focus on developing best practices, Web services interoperability testing and sample applications around "basic" Web standards such as XML, SOAP, UDDI and WSDL, said Neil Charney, director of Microsoft's .Net platform strategy.

The group plans to hold its first meeting in three weeks and to begin addressing interoperability issues over the next six months, Sutor said.

Some solution providers think WS-I could help nurture the use of Web services, which so far have been the province of early adopters.

"I expect that this group can do more to help educate, promote and solidify the cross-platform nature of XML and Web services than any standards body can solely take on," said John Matranga, CTO of Omicron Consulting, Philadelphia. "This is a working group to do the real-life implementation, marketing and education behind the technology."

But other solution providers noted that many of WS-I's members are industry rivals, which could slow the pursuit of Web services interoperability. Brian Bergin, president of Terabyte Computers, Hudson, N.C., pointed to OS/2's failure as evidence that IBM and Microsoft "don't have a great track record of working together." WS-1 "is going to need a lot more partners before it really makes any difference," Bergin said.

PAULA ROONEY contributed to this story.