Interoperability of a Window server

Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.

A white paper titled "Interoperability Through Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs)," by ObjectWatch, evaluates SOA technologies by providing a set of criteria.

Included are the author’s interviews with companies that are successfully building SOAs, as well as lessons learned that are applicable to any company interested in leveraging SOAs on Window servers.

The service-oriented architecture approach to interoperability delivers excellent scalability, better ability to leverage existing systems and applications, lower IT costs, and improved user productivity. Microsoft SOA technologies are a strong choice because:

• The development of most web service standards was done by Microsoft, such as SOAP
• Excellent developer tools with deeply integrated support for web services are offered by Microsoft
• Microsoft has a compelling cost/value proposition

A study by Jupiter Research shows that 72 percent give the Microsoft platform top interoperability marks. Interoperability is one of the key issues facing IT organisations.

Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) based on web service standards have emerged as the leading industry wide enabler for interoperability on Window servers.

Companies are finding huge expected benefits that embrace SOAs, such as:

• Opportunities of an increase in revenue through collaboration
• Decision making is improved through shared data
• Personnel costs are decreased through automated workflow

There are also some unexpected benefits, such as:

• Huge reductions in development and deployment costs
• Impressive improvements in time to market
• Migration of systems from expensive mainframe to inexpensive server clusters
• Dramatic improvements in system reliability

The specific Microsoft strengths that emerge from ObjectWatch's evaluation are the following:

• A strong collection of enterprise back-end technologies
• Excellent support for Window server interoperability with legacy systems
• Tight integration of web service standards into the programming tools
• Low cost of acquisition

Conclusions

It is clear that the rewards are being reaped for companies that are embracing service-oriented architectures (SOAs). Some of the payoff is anticipated, such as system to system interoperability. Some of the payoff is not anticipated, such as dramatic improvements in reliability.

It is also clear that Microsoft is an industry leader in service-oriented architectures, not only in the web service standards that define interoperability, but in the back-end support technologies that make up the overall SOA infrastructure. These include SQL Server, BizTalk, and HIS, among many others.

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