The Big 5 IT Vendors Fighting on the Web Services Game
18 August 2006Web Services is one of the most promising new technologies today in IT industry. While this technology is still a work in progress, big IT players have jumped to the market to grab a share. These top players are Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun, and BEA.
1. Microsoft
Systems integrators love Microsoft’s new hot technology - the .NET framework that fully support web services standards. According to Gartner’s survey of 44 consulting and systems-integration vendors in North America. Microsoft .Net was targeted by 58% of the systems integrators.
2. IBM
IBM, with 40% of the web services market, makes one of the top web services products to ramp up delivery capability. IBM WebSphere Software Development Kit for Web Services (WSDK) offers an integrated kit for creating, discovering, invoking, and testing Web services. The following components are included in WSDK:
1. An embedded version of IBM WebSphere Application Server - Express, V5.0 with additional support for ORB and EJBs.
2. Support for SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, UDDI 2.0, JAX-RPC 1.0, EJB 2.0, Enterprise Web Services (JSR 109) 1.0, WSDL4J, UDDI4J, and WS-Security.
3. A private UDDI v2.0 registry.
4. An entry-level database providing a JDBC implementation.
5. IBM SDK for Java Technology, version 1.3.1.
6. Tools to publish JavaBeans and stateless session EJBs as Web services, create Web services from WSDL definitions, and publish, and unpublish Web services to a UDDI registry.
7. Samples showing how to publish JavaBeans and stateless session EJBs as Web services, create Web services from WSDL definitions, publish, unpublish, and lookup Web services using UDDI, and create secure Web services using the WS-Security specification.
8. Comprehensive documentation including Web services concepts, developer tasks, and reference materials.
3. Oracle
Oracle came in third at about 31% of the market. Oracle9iAS provides a complete and integrated framework for developing, deploying, and managing Web services. Oracle9iAS Web Services supports:
1. Developing Web services using Java classes, Stateless and Session EJBs, and PL/SQL.
2. Aggregating Web services into both enterprise and wireless portals.
Integrating with other Web services, databases, legacy systems, and enterprise applications.
3. Personalizing Web services.
Consuming XML or HTML streams as Web services.
4. SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL standards.
4. Sun
Sun’s technology integrates web services with J2EE that allows Enterprise Java developers to develop, integrate, and deploy Java 2EE API like EJB along with Web services specifications such as WSDL and UDDI. Sun has developed sophisticated meta tag method for allowing Web services and JSP developers to use tags to build enteprise applications using or incorporating complex enterprise Java API such as EJB and JMX.
5. BEA
In addition to its leadership role in standards bodies, BEA implements the latest Web Services standards into the product platform including SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI.
BEA’s WebLogic provides the programming model, architecture, security, and transaction support that lets developers, J2EE experts, and application developers build, deploy, manage, and integrate enterprise-class Web services.
Technologies and Competition
Microsoft builds web services technology on its .NET framework, whereas IBM, Oracle, Sun, and BEA support Java/J2EE web services platform. Web services with both .NET and J2EE platform are still based on XML.
IBM is the giant who has the cash to compete with Microsoft head to head. They both are taking the lead in Web services as the innovators and driving forces behind most of the Web services specifications we see from the W3C and others, including SOAP. Sun and BEA as the major players have the products and tools to compete with Oracle in J2EE based web services market.
Java/J2EE based web services platform is attractive to larger enterprises that are more likely to have mainframe legacy applications and are turning to Java/J2EE to layer on Web services atop the infrastructure. J2EE is more popular in large-scale activities such as enterprise resource planning,
Microsoft’s .Net targets mid-market and smaller companies that can start with a clean slate. They find .Net more attractive and are most likely to use it for Web services related to E-commerce. Of course, the choice between .Net or Java/J2EE is just a matter of preference regarding the infrastructure that’s already in place, as well as comfort level, and costs.
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