Update: Sun, webMethods win WS-I election

Sun Microsystems and webMethods have won coveted seats on the board of directors of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), which is developing profiles and recommended practices for using Web services to integrate systems.

Winning the seats were Mark Hapner, Sun chief Web services strategist, and Andy Astor, vice president of enterprise Web services at webMethods. They will join representatives of founding board members Accenture, BEA Systems, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. The new terms begin on April 1. Sun has a two-year seat and webMethods has a one-year seat. Original members, however, have permanent seats.

"I think that obviously, Sun as a whole is very pleased," Hapner said Wednesday.

WS-I was founded in February 2002. Sun originally did not participate in the organization after it was not offered a board seat, despite its Java language and platfrom being a major Web services deployment environment. Sun began participating as a member company last fall.

Hapner acknowledged Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun would like a permanent seat that does not require running for re-election in two years.

"Obviously, we would have preferred to have a permanent seat," Hapner said. "I think at this point we're working within the charter of the organization and I think our plan is, of course, to make a strong contribution, playing an important role in the organization," which is what the company has been doing since joining, Hapner said.

WebMethods's Astor also expressed gratitude for being elected, and said his company could bring the perspective of a smaller company to the board, since its annual revenues of $200 million are dwarfed by those of the billion-dollar companies on the board. WebMethods also wants to extend WS-I to include more end-users and others.

"We think it's really important to extend the membership to end user companies, IT organizations, systems integrators," he said.

WebMethods, Astor said, has a long history of Web services technology. "We've been involved in service-oriented integration over the Web [since 1996], in other words Web services-based integration [since] the day we opened our doors," he said.

The company also supports both the Microsoft .Net and Java development camps, rather than choosing sides, he said. Fairfax, Va -based WebMethods wants to focus on Web services management as it joins the board, Astor said.

Sun's and webMethods's election to the board validates that those companies are important players in Web services standards, said Ted Schadler, principal analyst at Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass.

"Sun in particular had been, going back two years, kind of a non-player in setting the standards for Web services and lots of customers said, 'What about Sun? They're the keeper of Java. Why aren't they at the table for Web services?' Now, they're at the table… and they're one of the players in the driver's seat" Schadler said.

But the size of the board, now 11 members, could make it unwieldy, according to Schadler. "The board is very big and big boards have trouble moving," he said.

WS-I is not disclosing precise vote counts among the 166 WS-I member organizations.

Unsuccessful in bids to serve on the board were Cape Clear Software, Nokia, SeeBeyond and VeriSign.

WS-I is getting set to release its Basic Profile 1.0 in the May timeframe, which focuses on building Web services using SOAP, WSDL and UDDI, Hapner said.