Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., XML and Web services market research company, said WSDK is not necessarily a step away from IBM as much as a move to bring Microsoft developers into the company’s Web services fold.

“Basically, they had to do it to get their developers to use the stuff they spent time creating,” Schmelzer said. “This allows them to take their [Active Server Pages] .Net developers and other developers and give them a kick in the pants to use it.”

Microsoft still wants interoperability, Schmelzer said he believes, “but they don’t want their stuff to be replaceable. Like in the J2EE [Java 2 Enterprise Edition] world, you can remove BEA [Systems Inc.] software and replace it with something else.”

Read more at: eWeek