Key Insights

• There are several ways to go about implementing Web services. This chapter looks closely at several suppliers of Web services products and services.

How should your organization compare, contrast, and differentiate the product and service offerings of various Web services vendors? This chapter gives you a basic understanding of the product offerings of various Web services vendors. It does not focus on picking or portraying winners or losers. As stated previously, having one major vendor with a superior one implementation of Web services and another with an inferior one does not yield the result that we are all looking for cross-platform program-to-program interoperability. Instead, this chapter examines how multiple vendors have structured their respective product offerings, so that you, a business executive, will understand where to turn to purchase the hardware, software, and/or services needed to build your own Web services environment.

Chapter 8 described three approaches to building a Web services architecture: (1) turnkey application servers, (2) a la carte Web services tools/utilities, and (3) professional services firms. This chapter examines vendors in each of these categories.