ONE of Many

Sun ONE latecomer may help extend Web services in the long run

If you're wondering why Sun's formal rollout of Sun Open Net Environment (ONE) in late 2001 was important, you're not alone. After all, IT shops were building and deploying Web services long before Sun ONE arrived.

Sun ONE, as a concept, smells like a reaction to Microsoft's .NET initiative. ONE and .NET are both umbrella terms under which vendors have repackaged existing products and developed or refined complementary products and services to fit new marketing strategies. It isn't necessary to use any of Microsoft's or Sun's products or services to create and deliver Web services. However, you can now buy everything you need for Web services from Sun, including hardware and professional services. Microsoft sells everything but the hardware and has been moving in the direction of leasing its own applications as Web services.

It's ironic that Sun's role in the Web services movement is so tangential, because Sun's Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) plays such a large role in other vendors' success in the Web services market. "One of the reasons why Sun even announced, packaged, and articulated Sun ONE is that the marketplace has been struggling to figure out what Sun's value proposition is in the context of Web services," said Brad Murphy, CEO of software consulting firm DigitalESP Inc.

J2EE is a big part of what enabled DigitalESP to begin building in 1999 what are now called Web services for its clients. Web services are software components or applications that can be distributed via HTTP and accessed by a potentially wide array of systems. Application servers provide the infrastructure and runtime environment for Web services' functions. J2EE is at the heart of most application servers. Sun sells one such application server, iPlanet, but IBM's WebSphere and BEA Systems Inc.'s WebLogic have much greater market share.

However, because of Sun's and Microsoft's overall influence in the systems market, it is important that they participate in creating and complying with integration standards such as Simple Object Access Protocol; Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration; and ebXML. Widespread vendor cooperation with these standards is critical to the future of Web services because that's what will enable scalable distribution of Web services to external users.

According to Murphy, most Web services so far have been internally, not externally, distributed applications. Many IT managers are still rightfully dubious about the level of security available to applications crossing enterprise boundaries.

Despite these obstacles, internal Web services have increased in popularity and the overall market for Web services has continued to grow in an otherwise shrinking economy for two reasons. First, the Web services paradigm can be used to make applications more malleable to the will of end users and easier to modify to reflect changing business processes. Second, by 2008 or 2009, the Web services paradigm promises to get enterprises off the cumbersome and expensive "application integration treadmill."

— Jeanette Burriesci

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