GM tabs Sun for SOA development

ZapThink LLC analyst Ron Schmelzer said from the GM perspective “it makes sense for them to go to their current vendors to see if they can go forward with SOA.”

He also sounded the often-repeated, yet necessary warning that an SOA is an approach, not something you get out of a box.

“You can buy the best products in the world and not have an SOA,” he said.

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Microsoft spec invites controversy

“The last thing the industry needs are two different security/ID specifications,” said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with market researcher ZapThink. Bloomberg and Ron Schmeltzer [sic], also with ZapThink, said that a potential standards rivalry could be hurtful to the industry at large.

“Security is the primary concern of Web services users today,” said Schmeltzer. “If we see proliferation of multiple specifications backed by the big players, it could cause confusion and slow down end user adoption.”

Read more at: CNet

Sun Says Java Will Support Key Web Services Standards

Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass., said the decision to support WS-I’s basic profile shows that Sun is serious about its activity in the organization.

Read more at: ComputerWorld

Consumer Products: When Software Bugs Bite

Several analyst firms–including Patricia Seybold Group, ZapThink, and Venture Development Corp.–blame the technology industry itself, which is loosely regulated and tends to rush products to market to try to gain market share.

Read more at: Baseline

DataPower Secures XML

Another challenge is that standards for securing XML aren’t in place yet. At least one source says that could make it harder for DataPower and its competitors to sell their products.

“It’s more of a sales challenge than a technology challenge,” says analyst Ron Schmelzer of ZapThink LLC, a market researcher specializing in XML. In the absence of firm standards, customers may balk, even though DataPower and others make their products flexible enough to accommodate standards changes as they evolve.

Read more at: Light Reading

Recruiting WS-I Members from Vertical Industries

You joined the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Organization to accelerate and encourage the adoption of Web services. WS-I plans to meet these goals by providing deliverables that assist in the interoperability of Web services implementations. For the WS-I to be successful in its mission, however, it is essential that it has broad industry representation within its membership. WS-I needs your help.

At this time, a vast majority of WS-I members are IT vendors. Whether you work for a vendor or not, it’s in your company’s best interest to expand the WS-I membership, expecially among industry members outside the IT community. This white paper is an important tool to help you in this important activity.

This paper seeks to explain why current WS-I members should recruit additional industry members, why industry members should join the WS-I, and what actions WS-I members should take to recruit new members. It should be a starting point for ideas about how you can help the WS-I grow and become more effective in achieving its goals.

Network Identity: Decision Time

Leave it to Microsoft to stretch the definition on what standards-based technology really means.

“TrustBridge only supports companies using Kerberos,” explains Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, “which is the encryption technology heavily favored by Microsoft.”

Read more at: Sun Inner Circle

ZapNote: RSA Security

RSA Security has been in the encryption business since day one, and they have since successfully leveraged their early leadership to offer a range of security products and technologies in the application security space. RSA offers encryption components that form the basis of many of the evolving XML security efforts on the market today, such as XML Digital Signature, and their pioneering work with the Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) has affirmed their position as a leader in the identity management product space.

The Liberty Alliance: Circle of Mistrust

After almost a year of work, the Liberty Alliance (http://www.projectliberty.org) launched its first set of specifications, giving users simplified sign-on to Web sites from any platform or device as well as federated identity across multiple systems. The Liberty Alliance, led by Sun Microsystems, features an enterprise-heavy membership roster, including …

ZapNote: Chrome Systems

Many XML formats have been created in attempts to standardize various industries (over 500 by ZapThink’s latest count), but none have squarely addressed the needs for configuration and "order option rules" for the automotive industry. As such, Chrome Systems, a leader in automotive configuration software has created and released AutoTransmission, an XML format for specifying rules for ordering configurable automotive components. While specific to the automotive industry, much can be learned from how Chrome Systems has approached this specific need, and many of the elements may be applicable to other similar industries.