You may be wondering, why hasn't the uptake of Web services matched the bold predictions made when it was first launched? There are certainly more developers thinking about Web services with the advent of service-oriented architectures (SOA). However, the number of successful public Web services projects seems to be limited to a few high-profile companies like eBay and Amazon that have published APIs and end points, or developers who have been able to implement services internally but with a narrow and well-defined set of services - still a long way from the smart application that could self-select services at runtime.

In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' - or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'? At Enterprise Open Source Magazine we contacted a range of FOSS luminaries for their take on the issue.

How easy/difficult is it to nail down the most significant 100 contributors to i-Technology history? No sooner had I begun my attempt to do so than developers and IT professionals Web-wide began to send in their 2c...

'Jeffrey Zeldman has an interesting and widely covered new article on Web 2.0 which is almost exactly as content free as he claims the Web 2.0 hypesters are,' writes Dion Hinchcliffe. 'That's not to say that he doesn't make a few factually correct statements about AJAX and even makes a passing mention of social software,' Hinchcliffe continues. 'But he's missing many of the big pieces of Web 2.0 since he's apparently looking at it through the somewhat myopic tunnel vision of a web page designer.'

Is HP going to sell off its global software business? That would certainly be one way to interpret the sudden resignation of Nora Denzel, who heads up that unit.

Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference and Expo was held February 15-17, 2005 in Boston's Hynes Convention Center. In the pages which follow, please enjoy day by day photo coverage from the show floor. All sessions are also available to conference delegates at SYS-CON.TV Webcast pages, as well as through scheduled live broadcasts.

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, more than 16,000 votes have already been recorded, as more than 20,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards.

Like it or not, .NET is proving a powerful force in the software industry. As a ColdFusion developer, you'll probably need to interact with it at some point in time. One of the promises of .NET is that it can provide this interoperability through Web services.

After spending much of last year learning to use the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) to orchestrate Web Services and realize the benefits of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), we felt it was time for us to climb down off the bleeding edge of the razor and share our story about the real-world realities of implementing a BPEL-based project.

It can be difficult for developers, architects, and managers to keep up with new software packages and releases. This can be especially true with fast moving technologies like Web services. This article provides an overview of the main technologies that comprise the Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP). For more in-depth knowledge of the WSDP, simply download it and walk through the examples or complete the Java Web Services Tutorial. In an effort to standardize XML and Web services-related technologies, Sun Microsystems has developed implementations of popular standards and published them under the umbrella title of the WSDP. The toolkit's stated purpose is to simplify the development, testing, and deployment of secure and interoperable Web services. Version 1.5 is the latest release of the WSDP and contains many updates to existing technologies, new features, and a collection of bug fixes. This article will examine the main technologies provided in the WSDP and review their purpose and status.

Since releasing my latest book, Enterprise Service Bus (O'Reilly Media, 2004), I have been doing a fair amount of visiting corporations, conducting seminars, and generally discussing with enterprise architects the subject of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) and how an enterprise service bus (ESB) backbone can be leveraged to provide a framework for an enterprise SOA.

SAP executives were upbeat in their assessment of their ESA web services strategy. Noting that attendance at its Sapphire event is up 40% from a year ago, the company said that with its new 'Mendocino' strategy with Microsoft, and its general momentum throughout the enterprise IT market, the company is now 'the next big thing...we're moving faster than Java was 10 years ago.'

SAP has joined with Microsoft to deliver a joint enterprise IT approached codenamed 'Mendocino' that aims to integrate MS Office Professional with mySAP. But the real innovation will come from the companies' customers, according to SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, speaking today in Boston.

As the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia plays out, a number of unforeseen consequences may reveal themselves. One of them would be the end of most websites as we know them, and a substantial decline in the industry of website optimization. Major-media websites such as that of SYS-CON Media, CNN, or Google won't be affected. But smaller, simpler sites might.

With a reported 600,000 downloads with 48 hours, Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Norway-based Opera Software, is getting nervous about his promise to swim from Norway to the U.S. if its Opera 8 browser is downloaded one million times over the first four days of its availibility. The question is, 'are winters too long and dark in Norway?'

Yakov Fain reaches Lesson 11 in his popular 'Java basics' series. This time he deals with how and why Java programmers working on large projects that have lots of classes usually organize them in different packages; and explores the new element introduced in Java 5.0 called static imports.

'Compliance and security are the new Software Quality drivers,' said Dr Adam Kolawa, cofounder and CEO of Parasoft Corporation, talking live on SYS-CON.TV to Sean Rhody, editor-in-chief of Web Services Journal and Yakov Fain, Enterprise Editor of JDJ.

When in October of last year I asked the rhetorical question 'Is Mergermania Back?' (JDJ, Vol. 9, issue 10), there wasn't much doubt that it already was, but it took until last month to truly demonstrate just to what extent. It's not just back; in March we saw it's back with a vengeance.

Although some folks were predicting a 'bloodbath,' the App Server Shoot-Out at Web Services Edge 2005 in Boston did not result in any serious injuries. Instead, Anne Thomas Manes, VP and Research Director at Burton Group, brought together representatives from a wide assortment of application server vendors for a lively panel conversation.

Founded by two brothers out of a Stanford University research project and now already into its third successful round of venture finance, Infravio, Inc. is fast making a name for itself in the Web Services Management space, and spoke with SYS-CON.TV at Web Services Edge 2005 about its latest announcements, and the history of the company.

As Nexaweb Technologies, provider of the leading software platform for building and deploying rich internet applications, announced at Web Services Edge 2005, in Boston, its new Port Partner Program aimed at easing the migration of client/server applications to the Internet, Nexaweb founder and CTO Coach Wei talked to SYS-CON.TV (http://sys-con.tv) about the company' recent initiatives and accomplishments.

Now that Web services by nature are being run for mission-critical IT functions or for revenue-generating B2B exchanges, companies need to know that their Web services are going to be sufficiently robust and stand up in the production environment, and Parasoft's testing tools - says David McCaw, Parasoft's Manager of Web Services Solutions - are going from strength to strength for exactly that reason. SOAPtest, like Jtest 6.0 in the Java space, is a market leader.

Web services technology has become the ubiquitous connectivity fabric amongst diverse business domains and technical camps. At the same time, distributed parallel computing is becoming the de facto architecture for managing the performance of computationally intensive, long-running programs.

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, as more than 4,000 votes have already been recorded in just the first seven days of voting, as more than 50,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards. Highlights after just one week's voting are as follows.

Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference & Expo attendees will receive free software from Microsoft, worth in excess of half million dollars.

Tim Kinslow, practice manager for Web-based solutions at Trigent, will present 'Migrating ASP to ASP.NET' on Thursday, February 17 at 9 a.m. In this presentation, Kinslow will address how to choose a migration strategy that matches your business objectives and how to effectively plan for a successful migration. In addition, attendees will learn about the technical options and considerations faced during implementation and lessons learned from real-world ASP.NET migrations.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has quickly taken centre stage as the primary development style of the next decade and beyond. Businesses of all types are preparing for the SOA revolution that promises consistency of process, reduction in duplicate work, ease of maintenance, service reusability and broad interoperability.

'Microsoft has been working with the industry to advance a new generation of software that is interoperable by design, reducing the need for custom development and cumbersome testing and certification,' wrote Bill Gates yesterday in an 'executive e-mail' sent to all subscribers to executive e-mails from Microsoft, outlining the company's work 'to make its products interoperate well in a diverse IT environment.'

eBay, The World's Online Marketplace, has more than 114 million registered users, 10,000 developers, and over 700 live, third-party applications.

On February 16th at Web Services Edge 2005 in Boston, Mass., Mr. Farquharson will present the topic: 'B2B Policy Enforcement: The Third Rail of SOA Implementation.' In this presentation he will discuss XML Virtual Private Networks (XML VPNs) and their potential to mitigate security policy enforcement issues in B2B SOA.

Sonic Software is the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB). Sonic enterprise integration and messaging products deliver flexibility, scalability, and continuous availability through patent-pending innovations. Sonic Software enables over 700 customers to integrate their organizations from the department to the extended enterprise with a standards-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Sean Rhody, editor-in-chief of Web Services Journal and Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group discussed Web Services trends on Rhody's 'Web Services Update' SYS-CON.TV (www.SYS-CON.TV) program. They also discussed today's UDDI version 3.0 announcement. Additional coverage will be provided live from the upcoming Web Services Edge Conference & Expo, show floor.

SYS-CON Media, the world's leading i-technology media company, announced that its 2005 Readers' Choice Awards polls opened today, February 1, 2005, and will remain open for six months, until July 31, 2005. More than 50,000 readers are expected to cast their votes to select the best software products and services of the year for Java, Linux, Web Services, XML, Microsoft .NET, ColdFusion and Macromedia MX.

What does Apple have in common with Google, Ikea, Starbucks, and Al Jazeera? Answer: it has been rated one of the 'most influential brands of 2004' in a survey of about 2,000 advertising executives, brand managers and academics, conducted by the online magazine, Brandchannel. In fact, Apple came in at No. 1 - edging out Google, that took the top slot in the same survey one year ago.

SAP America, Inc., the U.S. and Canadian subsidiary of SAP AG (NYSE: SAP), this week announced the addition of several key executives to its leadership team overseeing strategic market segments, geographic territories, vertical industries and service units. The new executives join SAP America upon the company's completion of nine consecutive quarters of significant revenue growth, market share gains and industry leading customer satisfaction.

SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com), the world's leading i-technology media company, announced today that SYS-CON.TV (www.sys-con.tv), the first streaming live i-technology television is scheduled to debut on February 15, 2005 to coincide with the first day of the upcoming Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference Expo.

Sun Microsystems will be in Boston on February 14-17 at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2005, and the Web Services Edge Conference 2005 East at the Hynes Convention Center. You'll have the opportunity to learn more about Sun's work in the Linux and open source communities and meet with key executives.

SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com), the world's leading i-technology media company, announced today that the first branded blogging community, www.blog-n-play.com (TM), will go beta on February 15, 2005, to coincide with the opening day of the Web Services Edge 2005 East International Web Services Conference & Expo (www.sys-con.com/edg e2005east).

Prior to its announcement of the financial details of the takeover, which is due to take place next week - on January 26 - in New York, Oracle met with reporters yesterday at its Redwood Shores, CA, headquarters. The agenda: how Larry Ellison's Oracle-PeopleSoft is going to become a major thorn in the side for the current market leader in the world of business software, the German giant SAP.

Up to 5,000 Oracle/PeopleSoft employees are about to be fired. 'What's not known,' write Roger Strukhoff and Matt Vande Voorde, reporting direct from Pleasanton, CA yesterday, 'is how many of those jobs will be plucked from the sprawling PeopleSoft campus, which dominates the Hacienda Business Park in Pleasanton and is a major employer and economic driver in this region.'