Microsoft gives interoperability progress report
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Microsoft is offering updates Wednesday on the progress of interoperability initiatives, including the Interoperability Executive Customer Council (IEC) and the Interop Vendor Alliance (IVA).The company's announcement is "a way of taking stock after a year of fairly intensive activity," said Tom Robertson, Microsoft general manager for interoperability and standards.Formed last year, the IEC features 41 members from governments and corporations who work with Microsoft executives and product teams. IEC is meeting in Redmond, Wash. this week.According to Microsoft, IEC has addressed more than 60 issues in its four defined work streams, which include:* Office productivity and collaboration tools to ensure that tools can exchange documents and enable collaboration and document management across systems * Developer tools and run time, in which application development has been boosted across platforms and systems * Security and identity management with the promoting of security across many identity platforms * Systems management through enabling end-to-end, cross-platform service managementHighlights in security and ID management include Microsoft collaboration with industry partners Fraunhofer-Institute FOKUS, ThoughtWorks, and Zend Technologies to develop open-source interoperability projects on information cards for Sun's Java language, Ruby, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), and C-module. These initiatives will give users better control over personal information on the Web, Microsoft said."We're ultimately trying to provide people with better control over their personal information on the Web and improve the trustworthiness of Web-based interaction," Robertson said.In the system management area, Microsoft acquired enterprise management company Engyro to incorporate monitoring products into Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007.The IVA, launched in November 2006, discusses mutual customer feedback and focuses on technical collaboration to resolve interoperability challenges through scenario-based testing, Microsoft said. Companies like Linspire, Sun, and AMD participate.At the Interop New York 2007 conference this week, an IVA pavilion will showcase collaborations, such as EMC, CA, and Microsoft streamlining management of heterogeneous systems, including Linux, Oracle, JBoss, and Windows. This is being done via a Systems Management Interoperability Lab.Also, IVA members Centrify, Quest Software, and Microsoft worked to demonstrate how to centrally manage security identities across Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows. Cross-product federation is being demonstrated as well by several members as part of a federated identity initiative.To advance portal document repository collaboration, IVA members Merido, Microsoft, and others have shown how to identify and collaborate on documents across portals and repositories.Also, Microsoft began working to deliver interoperability by design based on commitment to XML in 2005. Since then, the company has announced more than 30 interoperability deliverables including moving dozens of specifications to the OSP (Open Specification Promise), interoperability projects like Linux and Windows virtualization and management work being done by Microsoft and Novell, Microsoft said.Microsoft is announcing on Wednesday that OSP is being extended to hypercall API in Windows Server Virtualization. This applies virtualization to further enable interoperability across commercial and open-source software solutions, Microsoft said.Microsoft's interoperability efforts have not been without criticism. A deal with Novell on interoperability between Suse Linux and Windows, featuring payments going between the two companies, has drawn criticism in the open-source community as a concession to Microsoft.Robertson said Microsoft has made a lot of progress with interoperability, detailing with issues that are not universally easy to address. But he acknowledged not every single issue will be solved.
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In a statement issued Thanksgiving Day -â perhaps timed appropriately, since the holiday is celebrated mainly in the US -â Microsoft said it had released all 8,500 pages of its technical documentation for interoperability, as requested by the European Commission, back in July.
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The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit group backed by a number of commercial open source vendors, released a survey on Wednesday that found interoperability is a foremost concern among open source software customers.The group, which includes CollabNet, EnterpriseDB, and others, contended in a statement that if its members overcome interoperability challenges, they stand to &quot;out-Microsoft Microsoft by offering a fully interoperable suite of business tools.&quot;&quot;We think interoperability has to be a core feature [of open source software] from the very beginning,&quot; OSA&#39;s president, Dominic Sartorio, said in an interview. &quot;Most commercial open source companies are finding a good amount of success. But how many opportunities are they leaving on the table because they&#39;re not interoperable?&quot;The OSA singled out Microsoft, as opposed to Oracle or SAP, because its member companies mostly target midmarket customers, according to Sartorio. &quot;We have one common competitor: Microsoft.&quot;OSA derived the study&#39;s findings from a series of forums it held this year in Europe and the United States. It said some 100 people attended the events.Participants cited a variety of interoperability scenarios and concerns, including single sign-on for identity management.Another involved user interface interoperability. &quot;A lot of people try to plug open source projects into an enterprise portal, and they want a unified look and feel,&quot; Sartorio said.Customers also cited cross-platform portability and data integration challenges.In addition, the study found that:-- Lower up-front cost was the most important driver for adoption of open source products, but this was tempered by concerns that spending on support and services would be greater. That feeling in turn was mitigated by a belief among respondents that open source products will become more mature over time and easier to support.-- Few customers cited the ability to customize source code as a selling point for open source applications, preferring instead that it handle their needs out of the box.Sartorio said OSA&#39;s work will continue in 2008. &quot;This is going to be an ongoing effort. We&#39;re scratching the surface here with issues customers brought up in these forums,&quot; he said.
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A host of companies led by Microsoft and Intel has revised and released a specification for making sure computer systems have a common way to communicate.
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Microsoft and Sun may be going steady, but they aren&#39;t quite sure where the relationship is headed. The companies gave an update on Wednesday to their &quot;ongoing dialogue&quot; about product interoperability that
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Microsoft and Sun Microsystems say they are warming up to each other, but it will take more time to deliver on the grand promises of platform interoperability announced last spring.
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BREAKING NEWS - Early this morning, Microsoft reported it had been notified that its Office Open XML format received a 74% positive vote in a preliminary ballot that could pave the way for its final ratification as an international standard.
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Microsoft joins Concordia Project to improve interoperability among identity management systems.
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Microsoft announced Monday that it had completed its Windows Home Server (WHS) software and released the code to its OEM partners, just six months after unveiling the project.
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Companies agree to incorporate software interoperability tools in e-commerce partnership.
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(InfoWorld) - Emphasizing SOA, the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) on Monday is publishing draft documents on Web services and security, and seeks public feedback. SOA architects have been awaiting these deliverables, which provide guidance on interoperability for core Web services and business processes in enterprises, WS-I said. "The Web services specifications and the Web services stack is the underlying technology for SOA," said Michael Bechauf, WS-I chairman and SAP vice president of industry standards. Formed in 2002, WS-I focuses on helping vendors and users implement Web services rather than having users labor with the multitude of specifications. "At the end of the day, the end user really shouldn't care about the underlying specifications," Bechauf said. WS-I features members such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. Working Group Drafts being published include Basic Profile 1.2, Basic Security Profile 1.1, and Reliable Secure Profile 1.0 Usage Scenarios. The draft documents are up for public and member review and are expected to be approved early in 2007. "The tangible results will be that vendors will actually build solutions according to those profiles," with users assured that the systems will work together, Bechauf said. Basic Profile 1.2 is the revision of the Basic Profile 1.1, which offers guidance on basic interoperability of the Web services stack. Version 1.2 incorporates errata and includes requirements pertaining to serialization of Web services envelopes and their representation in messages from the WS-I Simple SOAP Binding Profile 1.0. The new profile was constructed mostly using WS-Addressing, which defines a standard mechanism for identifying and exchanging Web services messages between endpoints. Specifications incorporated into Basic Profile 1.2 include Core, SOAP Binding, and WSDL Binding specifications pertinent to WS-Addressing 1.0.Â Â  Comments on Basic Profile may be e-mailed here: wsbasic_comment@ws-i.org WS-I Basic Profiles make life easier for developers by focusing on what they need to know to make Web services work, said analyst Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group. "I think the WS-I Basic Profiles are always a good thing because they constrain the specifications, so it gives developers fewer things to worry about," Manes said. "The main reason that you want profiles is they explain how to use the specifications the right way and ensure that you will get a better chance of achieving interoperability," Manes said. She acknowledged that the plethora of Web services specifications can cause confusion among developers. Manes said she has counted 52 WS-* (spoken as âws starâ) specifications for standardizing Web services operations. "That's enough to make anybody's head spin," Manes said. WS-I has been providing guidance on Web services specifications to OASIS, which oversees many of them, Manes said. "A lot of people think that WS-I hasnât done anything for two years but in fact it has," Manes said. Also on the WS-I docket for Monday, the Working Group Draft of Basic Security Profile 1.1 revises the 1.0 version of the document and incorporates errata to data. It profiles WS-Security 1.1 and WS-Security token profiles, including Username, X.500, Kerberos, and SAML (Security Access Markup Language). Feedback on Security Profile 1.1 can be submitted to this e-mail address: wsi_secprofile_comment@lists.ws-i.org The Working Group Draft of Reliable Secure Profile 1.0 Usage Scenarios features guidance on use of Reliable Secure Profile. It features specifications such as WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1 and WS-SecureConversation 1.3 as well as WS-I's Basic Profiles and Basic Security Profiles. Feedback on the Usage Scenarios can be e-mailed to this address: wsi_rsp_comment@lists.ws-i.org. WS-I documents are accessible at the WS-I Web site.
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Microsoft's partners showed support for the company's unified communications platform with hardware and software announcements.
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Microsoft and Sun have declared some progress in their efforts to achieve interoperability citing co-operation on web services standardisation and deployment of Windows on Sun systems.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft says it will focus on four key areas to improve interoperability between its own software and other vendors' products. Senior Microsoft representatives met with InfoWorld on Thursday to highlight identity management; Web services and related development; collaboration between information workers and system management comprise the new interoperability focus. "We are really working on new protocols in the WS-* [spoken as Web services star] space that enable interoperability across identity systems," said Jean Paoli, Microsoftâs general manager of interoperability and XML architecture. Lat week, Microsoft vowed to integrate its CardSpace identity management system with the OpenID Web authentication standard. Paoli emphasized the move as evidence of the commitment. WS-* represents a series of Web services-related specifications for standardization in areas such as security and messaging. A lot of the issues Microsoft has in interoperability tend to fall into these four categories, said Tom Robertson, the companyâs general manager of interoperability and standards. "Those are the four areas that we're hearing about now," as needing attention, Paoli said. "It doesn't mean the list is closed." Microsoft's identity management push, however, apparently will not be centered on its previous Passport initiative for Internet security.Â  "I've not been hearing about Passport in so long," Paoli said. Microsoft plans to be creative in addressing interoperability, using a host of tools at its disposal. "It's going to mean making IP available in a range of ways," Robertson said. The company already has dabbled in open source as a way to boost interoperability, offering a bridge between the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML electronic document formats, said Robertson. Paoli and Robertson listed multiple Microsoft interoperability projects in the past several years, such as its work with Novell on interoperability between Windows and Novell's Suse Linux. The company's interoperability effort with Sun Microsystems also was noted. But they remained upset with IBM for what Microsoft perceives are IBM efforts to block Open XML from becoming approved as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The two co-authored an open letter this week entitled "Interoperability, Choice and Open XML," that pointed fingers of blame at IBM. "The open letter is an effort to clearly articulate what Microsoft is trying to do," Robertson said. It is important to shine a light on what IBM is doing to block Open XML and block choice, he added. In response, an IBM representative pointed to the ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog, which states there is "significant commercial opposition" to Microsoft's electronic document proposal. Microsoft made a "bad bet " that ODF would fail in the marketplace, the blog stated.
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(Sterling Commerce)  In September 2007, Computerworld invited IT and business leaders to participate in a survey on integrationand interoperability at their organizations. The survey was fielded through an invitation onComputerworld.com. The goal of the survey was to gain a better understanding of the issues surroundingintegration and interoperability. While commissioned by Sterling Commerce, all data for this survey wasgathered and tabulated independently by Computerworld Research. The following report represents top-lineresults of that survey.
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Microsoft used a Seattle conference to show off some features of the next version of Project.
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Under the effort announced today, the two will share APIs and develop protocols to enable better interoperability between Microsoft's Network Access Protection technology and Cisco's Network Admission Control technology.