Sun seeks board seat The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) on Wednesday will reveal the two winners of new seats on the panel’s board of directors, instead of making the announcement Friday as had been planned.The election is considered crucial because Sun Microsystems is running for a two-year seat on the board, to join other industry stalwarts such as Microsoft and IBM. Sun’s Mark Hapner, Sun’s WS-I representative and chief Web services strategist in Sun’s Java Web services organization, would serve as Sun’s representative on the board. WS-I is developing industry profiles for usage of Web services and is considered a major player in how Web services will evolve.The board currently has nine members. The top vote-getter in the election, held last week, will receive a two-year term to commence on April 1 while the second-place finisher earns a one-year seat. Other companies seeking seats include Cape Clear Software, Nokia, SeeBeyond, VeriSign, and webMethods. WS-I conducted voting among its 166 member organizations and found tallying the results to be more straightforward than initially anticipated, a WS-I representative said. Thus, the announcement is being made earlier than originally planned.WS-I on its Web site describes itself as “an open industry effort chartered to promote Web Services interoperability across platforms, applications, and programming languages.”“The organization brings together a diverse community of Web services leaders to respond to customer needs by providing guidance, recommended practices, and supporting resources for developing interoperable Web services,” the site said. Software Development