Microsoft and BEA this week reiterated their commitment to address customer interoperability needs through joint support for Web services within their respective products. The overall intent of this collaboration is to extend enterprise interoperability and simplify customer deployment of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The two companies are also currently discussing additional opportunities to improve interoperability for joint customers.

Microsoft and BEA together have helped author all the major specifications comprising the WS-* Web Services Architecture, contributing to both broader and deeper interoperability across the industry. Further, BEA and Microsoft have both hosted and participated in the Web Services Protocol Workshops to validate interoperability between BEA and Microsoft products and those of other vendors in the industry.

"Service infrastructure is poised to fundamentally change enterprise IT architecture. And the beauty of it is that it unifies operating environments, programming languages, and even big application stacks - which is important to helping reduce the billions of dollars spent on integration," said Marge Breya, chief marketing officer, BEA. "The coexistence of Microsoft .NET and the J2EE environment is a reality in today's enterprise. With today's announcement of our new AquaLogic service infrastructure platform, BEA is demonstrating unified support for both .NET and J2EE programming models," Breya continued.

"Companies must have access to all their data wherever it may reside, organizationally or technologically," said Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of developer and platform evangelism, Microsoft. "For information to flow freely, securely and productively in the enterprise, the Java and the .NET communities and software vendors must work together to ensure interoperable infrastructure. We are fully committed to interoperability between the .NET and J2EE environments via Web services," he added.