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By Tony Hallett, 19 June 2003 08:17

NEWS The biggest threat to the adoption of web services technologies is steady acceptance of web services by users not being met with steady business benefits. That’s the view of Mark Hapner, chief web services strategist at Sun Microsystems, one of the main companies trying to shape the direction of web services. The phrase itself refers to the seamless linking together of various applications over the internet to create a ‘web service’ - internally in organisations as well as with partners, customers and suppliers - using a range of standards, most fundamentally XML. In an interview with silicon.com at this week’s EEMA conference in Prague, Hapner said: “The biggest obstacle we face is [user organisations] not seeing incremental improvements in businesses as they incrementally increase their investments in the technology.” Earlier, Hapner had shared a stage with representatives from IBM and Microsoft, the two other main vendor protagonists in the evolving web services market. Microsoft’s strategy is based around its .Net framework and the message from Neil Hutson, Microsoft chief architect .Net EMEA, was very much about that technology working together with a range of other software. Most of the other main vendors fall into the Java camp, specifically developing software based on J2EE. However, IBM is noticeably trying to position itself above a mud-slinging .Net versus J2EE debate, talking about web services’ place in its ‘Ebusiness on demand’ vision of computing. Bob Sutor, IBM director of web services technology, said: “We are fundamentally Java-based but if we cannot connect with the .Nets of the world then we’ve failed.” Sun’s Hapner was critical of Microsoft not clearly stating when it is backing a standard or not. He added: “I’m not sure they understand themselves which are standards and which aren’t.” Earlier Microsoft’s Hutson answered claims that the main vendors aren’t aligned in terms of standards. “If we’re not supporting standards there’s always the choice to move to another vendor that does,” he said. The web services market has been growing up quickly – for example most CIOs are now experimenting with projects internally at least and see the promise of the concept – but there has been plenty of jostling over standards and positioning, most noticeably from half a dozen or so major players.