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Microsoft and Web Services

Web Services are a way for Microsoft to leverage the existing base of J2EE without having to do anything to support Java explicitly.

In his article, "Why Microsoft needs IBM this time around", Mike Ricciuti argues that "Microsoft needs IBM to legitimize .Net and its entire development plan as a truly cross-platform strategy." While I think that both IBM and Microsoft sincerely want to make a case for the power of Web Services and to demonstrate that it is a cross-vendor effort, I think that neither does Microsoft needs IBM to help drive sales of .NET nor does IBM have any interest in legitimizing .NET.

Web Services and .NET are two very distinct things. Web Services is an open standard for programs to exchange data over a network. .NET is Microsoft's proprietary application development and deployment framework that happens to use Web Services as part of its approach. IBM can support the former without supporting the latter.

Web Services are in fact starting to take off. A number of customers that I work with have started to adopt Web Services as both an internal IT transport layer and even also as a way to make content available to business partners (in very contained ways so far). The fact that Web Services have not yet completely transformed the world by seamlessly interconnecting all supply chains and other business partner relationships is simply a result of:

1. the fact that it take a long time to adopt any new technology, and Web Services is still very young in the grand scheme of things.



2. there are still a lot of issues with Web Services that need to be worked out to make them practicable in the large. Specifically, Web Services need more management, orchestration, transactional efficiency, and security support. These are exactly the areas in which IBM and Microsoft made a commitment last week.

.NET is also being adopted, even without companies necessarily buying into the grand plan for Web Services. So far .NET’s success has primarily been a tools success -- Visual Studio developers are upgrading to Visual Studio .NET. However, I have come across several large Java-oriented enterprises that are now planning on building .NET Smart Clients to their J2EE back-ends because they feel that Java has not given them a viable alternative on the front end.

I suspect that Microsoft's peculiar interest in Web Services is a way to leverage the existing base of J2EE installations in the market without having to do anything specific to support J2EE (which would be anathema to MS). I have argued in an earlier entry that Microsoft plans to use its domination of the desktop to push the client side of .NET and then to use the domination of client-side .NET to push server-side .NET. The challenge that Microsoft faces is that many large corporations currently have big investments in J2EE -- if Microsoft forced them to turn their backs on those investments in order to adopt .NET, then client-side .NET would face a lot of extra friction in its adoption. Microsoft can erase that friction with Web Services and then tackle the server-side (i.e. head-to-head competition with J2EE) as Phase 2 of its strategy.

Java vs. .NET, part 3 - Open Standards

Java’s traditional weapon of choice

The concept of open standards has been the primary weapon of the non-Microsoft camp (which includes the Java community) against Microsoft. And it is a reasonable weapon. Open standards are meant to ensure interoperability between products from different vendors so that customers have the flexibility to put together best of breed solutions and, at least in theory, can swap out one vendor’s products for another’s if they become disenchanted with the first vendor on product quality or price. This means that all vendors are competing on a flatter playing field, and therefore customers and smaller vendors get the benefit of a more efficient market. Cliff Schmidt offers a very nice overview of the why, what, where, who, when, and how of standards.

Major vendors in the non-Microsoft camp push hard on the idea that Microsoft is proprietary and closed, meaning that Microsoft technology interoperates only with other Microsoft technology. A customer who goes down the Microsoft route is “locked in” and can’t choose to swap in non-Microsoft products.

The ideas behind the open standards movement are laudable, and I believe in them. Product standardization -- of electric outlets, of audio equipment connections, of bolt sizes, of fuel types, etc. -- has greatly benefited customers in general. It should certainly do the same in the world of software.

However, as a weapon against Microsoft, it has several weaknesses:

1. It only matters on the server. At this point in time, at least, Microsoft is the unrivalled king of the desktop. They set the standards there, and there are no major movements to challenge Microsoft as the standards-setter within that domain. This means that the concept of open standards in software really only has value in the server/network environment.



2. Microsoft developers don’t care. Microsoft shops are unswayed by the idea of open standards. For them, the standards that Microsoft sets are as legitimate as standards set by any official standards organization. It is a misrepresentation to say that Microsoft software only works with other Microsoft software. Microsoft has fostered a huge ecosystem of ISVs who conform to the standards that it sets. There is a belief in the Microsoft camp, justified or not, that software from vendors who conform to the Microsoft Standard interoperates at least as well, if not better than, software from vendors who conform to Open Standards.



3. The Open Standards camp is fractured. Standards are meant to foster cooperation, innovation, and customer choice. Unfortunately, in the melee of competition, large vendors are often guilty of using standards to club each other over the heads. They also use them, ironically, to keep smaller vendors out of the running by eliminating the possibility of innovation and reducing any competition to one of superior implementation of the given standard, which clearly favors large established vendors.



4. Microsoft is getting into the open standards game. Microsoft has been one of the loudest champions of open standards for XML and Web Services and has moved agressively to make C# an official standard. And they seem to be having a high time clubbing Sun over the head with various aspects of the Web Services standards process. Now, none of us believe that they truly believe in the philosophy of open standards, and there are even rumors that they will shortly abandon the official Web Services standards when they release Indigo. But in the meantime, their high visibility involvement in standards dulls the open standards arguments of the non-Microsoft camp.

(To be continued)

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