Page III: Multiple standards muddy the waters and keep customers from taking the Web services plunge.
The "pre-baking" companies say the practice results in faster and better technical specifications. Scott Dietzen, BEA's chief technology officer, is responsible for standards work at BEA. He said IBM, Microsoft and BEA should be the ones doing a first take on technical specifications, such as reliable messaging and business process workflow, because they have the market share and the experience.
"You can't bring 20, 30 vendors together and design something successful. Plus, we already had a lot of IP (intellectual property) in place," Dietzen said. "A bunch of the vendors that weren't invited to the party are angry, but the model is working."
At the time of the WS-I's creation, the newly formed group demonstrated that even an industry-wide agreement on the same standards did not erase longstanding rivalries. Sun Microsystems was originally shut out of the WS-I's founding membership at Microsoft's request, prompting CEO Scott McNealy to decry the newfound group's "political shenanigans." Sun eventually joined the WS-I and last year was elected to its board.
The WS-I has tried to take on the role of arbiter in the political wrangling among different members by making decisions based on the technical merits of different specifications and market acceptance, WS-I executives said. An outcome of two similar but slightly incompatible Web services standards is unacceptable, said Andy Astor, an executive at integration software company WebMethods and a member of the WS-I's board.
"Is the decision process optimal? Well, it is market-driven," Astor said. "Is there a technical meritocracy? Absolutely. Is there politics and financial clout involved? Of course there is."
WS-I's Glover argues that competition among proposed standards benefits the customer by providing more mature technical results in the long run, even if it causes some short-term confusion. Since the WS-I is not attached to a single standards body, the guidelines and tests it releases take into account the work of multiple standards groups, he added.
Technology vendors that are members of WS-I concede that they'd like technical guidelines and tests to come out quicker, which would help spur adoption among customers. But given the complexity of the task, the WS-I's work cannot go much faster than it already is, said Girish Juneja, senior vice president of product management at Web services company Sarvega.Although the WS-I has the support of many vendors, its work has yet to prove indispensable to the customers buying Web services software, said Tom Rhinelander, an analyst at research firm New Rowley Group. "The WS-I is great in that they absolutely want everything and anything working together. But is it critical? It doesn't seem to be a driving force in the industry."
There is an early indication that the WS-I standards compliance guidelines are catching on with one all-important customer -- software developers. In a recent study conducted by research company Evans Data, 43 percent of developers surveyed said WS-I standards compliance was the most important feature in a programming tool.
There is a lot riding on the WS-I's effectiveness. Without adequate guidance on standards compliance, customers may end up doing custom coding to make different vendors' products work together. And a formalised standardisation process, involving all the leading vendors, could give way to more ad hoc standards adoption driven by customer usage, as is the case with Microsoft Windows.
Updegrove argues that group's charter of coordinating the work of other groups exposes basic flaws in the standards process. "The WS-I concept is intriguing, but a better fix would be for the (standards) consortia themselves to get it right to start with, to avoid the force-fitting," he said
Brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, which has been working with the WS-I since late 2002, participates in the organisation to help it stay in line with the latest Web services standards as they mature, said Dave Cohen, Merrill Lynch's representative at the WS-I.
The firm's strategy is to ensure that all Web services software complies with the WS-I's certifications. But because Web services standards are relatively basic right now, WS-I compliance across all of Merrill Lynch's products is a long-term goal.
Overall, Cohen said that the structure of the WS-I allows Merrill Lynch employees to interact with technology providers in a more effective manner than other standards bodies, such as the IETF or W3C.
"The WS-I provides a forum where enterprise staff can interact with the people who are writing the standards," Cohen said. "(That) forum for clarification and networking has proven invaluable."
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