“There are some specific needs for notification in grids that Microsoft and others didn’t want to consider,” said Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based ZapThink LLC. “So, basically, IBM had some priorities for their event messaging spec that weren’t priorities for Microsoft and others.”

So, what do all of these WS-related specifications mean to users? Not much, said Schmelzer, of ZapThink. “Our concern is that we’re seeing a little bit of a spec glut,” he said. “Customers don’t implement specs, they implement products.”

Schmelzer said that it can take a year or more before specifications find their way into software products. That’s true of WS-Eventing, which probably won’t make its debut in a product until Longhorn, the next version of Microsoft’s Windows, comes out in about 2006, he said.

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