IBM, Java, and the Future of Web Services (Continued)
How Different Vendors Are Approaching Web Services
FTPOnline: How would you characterize the differences among vendors focused on Web services?
Sutor: IBM and Microsoft are the leaders in terms of defining the initial specifications. We've done a great job of getting industry support. The Web services security specification, published with VeriSign, was brought to OASIS with 18 companies behind it. With WDSL last year, we worked with 23 companies to bring it to the W3C. We've been out in front in defining these specs and getting the industry galvanized behind them. It means that, particularly in the Java world, we are leaders in steering the industry and getting the feedback and cooperation of others as well.
Web services have to be an evolution. The world doesn't need a new marketing revolution in these technologies every year. That's why I'll tell you that IBM has focused a tremendous amount on Web services on top of Java. Java, about six or seven years old, has been developed by the Java Community Process. [The Java Community Process] is not quite as open as it might be, but it's solid. We have made sure the JVM is solid, reliable, and as advanced as possible. We believe that building on things that have come before, with connections to legacy applications, is extremely important.
FTPOnline: How do you distinguish between what you're doing with Web services and what Microsoft is doing?
Sutor: We've spent a lot of time trying to undo .NET vs. Web services. Web services are a technology. We implement in Web services. They implement in .NET.
It is confusing. .NET seems to be every bit of software Microsoft has created. When it started, it was focused, but it's widened to such an extent that it's hard to get a handle on it. When you deal with Microsoft and .NET from a development perspective, you're talking about building on a Windows platform. The world is not restricted to that. The importance of Web services is that you have to communicate. If Microsoft has standards and can't interoperate with COBOL, the company has failed. The whole spirit of Web services is the communications aspect and interoperability. You don't have to ask Web services what they're running.
The world is heterogeneous. Most people's environments are heterogeneous. I appreciate that we'll have some Microsoft boxes, some of ours, some from other companies. Java serves as the leveler. The important thing for most enterprises is, "Will it work on my Linux box and my mainframe, and on Solaris and HP?" Things like that are why we spent so much effort on Java. WebSphere runs on these platforms, and Java is a solid language that runs on these as well. J2EE is battle tested, and Java is pretty much bulletproof. From the point of view of reliability and robustness, Java already has six or seven years of experience on many platforms, with solid code and solid libraries.
About the Author
Tim Haight is Editor-in-Chief of FTPOnline. Reach him at thaight@fawcette.com.
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