Ajit Sagar

Over the last few years, Web services and SOA have made a lot of inroads into not only the IT departments of large enterprises, but also into the minds of the business owners of different LOBs (Lines of Business). SOA is more than Web services; it is the mantra for bridging the gaps and walls between IT and business. One of the main reasons behind this is that when the SOA paradigm is mentioned, it automatically translates into an "interoperable," "technology-neutral" nirvana. Of course, any mature organization accepts the fact that there are many baby steps before getting from here to there, but the promise of success is believable - at least in theory. Nowadays you can hear the words "component factory" and "business factory" in the same sentence.

While organizations are embracing the promise of SOA, vendors are presenting a united front by touting their ability to expose whatever plumbing they have behind the covers as ubiquitous services that are available to any client. When Web services started gathering some momentum, one of the main concerns from the industry was the ability of product vendors to be able to work together to make the promise a reality. CORBA had come and gone (after all, in many ways, SOA is just another euphemism for distributed computing). In order for the whole picture to come together, the mainstream platforms, namely .NET and Java, had to adhere to the standards and deliver products that would pragmatically facilitate service enablement. The industry has come a long way, and it does seem that vendors are providing the united front that is needed, whatever their product offerings may be. Their focus is now more on how to differentiate via the tools and standard APIs that will enable the components to become "SOA compliant."

As the industry moves forward, there is more cross-platform support between vendors. Case in point, the recent agreement between JBoss and Microsoft that will have increased benefits for JBoss users who are developing Web services on .NET platforms. Five years or so ago, you wouldn't have thought of these types of partnerships. JBoss is very much a prodigal child of the Java platform. The technology engagement between the two companies is expected to include technical assistance and architectural guidance on the following features:

• Microsoft Active Directory: Integrated sign-on and federated identity
• Web Services: Interoperability using Web services architecture
• Management: A Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager
• SQL Server: Optimized performance for users of Hibernate, JBoss's object/relational mapping technology, and Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0

JBoss is in an interesting space. At JavaOne this year, I had the chance to interview Pierre Fricke, director of product development at JBoss (the interview is available online on SYS-CON.TV - http://java.sys-con.com/read/109191.htm), and he mentioned that JBoss is building a professional services unit that will assist customers in deploying JBoss products. It will be interesting to see how fast the company can scale to address the needs of the customers not only in the product deployment phase, but also in planning how to take advantage of the integrated offerings for Web service enablement. I think that level of scalability is only achievable through partnerships with System Integrator companies.

Last month Microsoft released Web Services Enhancement (WSE) 3.0 Beta for Windows .NET, which enhances the development and deployment of secure Web services. As far as tools go, Microsoft has always maintained the lead in tools that automate development and deployment. The Web services arena has been no exception. The challenge for .NET has been, and will continue to be, acceptance for enterprise applications in large organizations. Web services definitely constitute a paradigm that facilitates the adoption of .NET into large organizations because the interoperability provided by the paradigm enables IT to adopt .NET into parts of the solution while retaining other technologies for the high-volume applications. Partnerships such as the recent one between JBoss and Microsoft will help to further the cause.