Sun (CANCELADA)

Sun Wins WS-I Board Seat
(URL: http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/breakingnews.asp?ArticleID=40792)
By Elizabeth Montalbano

CRN

Palo Alto, Calif.

11:41 AM EST Wed., Mar. 26, 2003
Sun Microsystems has won a much-coveted seat on the board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization, according to the WS-I.

In elections held earlier this month, the WS-I elected Mark Hapner, a Sun distinguished engineer and chief Web services strategist, to take over one of two available seats.
Andy Astor, vice president of enterprise web services at webMethods, also won a seat on the board, which now has 11 members.
Since Hapner received the most votes for the two available seats, he will take over a two-year term on the board on April 1. Astor will begin a one-year stint at the same time, according to the WS-I.
The board’s other nine seats are held by WS-I founders IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, BEA Systems, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Oracle and SAP.
IBM and Microsoft led the formation of the WS-I a year ago to ensure Web services interoperate between different vendors’ technologies. There are currently 166 WS-I member organizations.
Sun did not join the WS-I until late last year amid controversy that IBM and Microsoft purposely left it out of initial proceedings. One Sun source pointedly said that Microsoft and IBM were trying to “vote Sun off the island” and set the Web services standards without it even though Sun is a major force behind the Java programming language and environment that has become critical in Web services deployments.
Although IBM and Microsoft compete heavily and IBM has aligned itself on the Java side of the J2EE vs .Net war, IBM and Sun have a strained relationship.
Sun’s intention in joining the WS-I has always been to play a leadership role in the group as a member of its board of directors, Sun executives have said.