Next Level Of ServicesNext Level Of Services

IBM and Microsoft last week demonstrated three jointly developed Web-services capabilities, a year in the making, that officials of both companies say will add security, reliable messaging, and the ability to execute transactions to the Web-services building blocks that are already available.

In one mock scenario, an employee of an auto dealership using a Web browser and one password accessed a manufacturer's inventory system to order windshield wipers. The transaction occurred across systems using IBM's DB2 database and Linux operating system on one side and Microsoft's SQL Server and Windows Server 2003 on the other. Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, says savings derived from no-hassle apps integration can be applied to innovation or lowering operations costs.

It will be important to push the specs through the standards process and to show the same capabilities at work in business environments with PBXML, an iteration of XML that helps define business processes, Meta Group analyst David Cearley says. Gates expects the specs to appear in products in about nine months.