Microsoft, Sun tout interoperability progress

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are claiming progress in their interoperability efforts, citing ongoing cooperation on Web services standardization, deployment of Windows on Sun boxes, and forthcoming identity management plans.

Representatives of the two companies last week noted actions taken in relation to a cooperation agreement forged between the two formerly bitter rivals in April.

“We really are working toward a world where both Sun and Microsoft products coexist,” said Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun. “We’re going to ensure unique levels of interoperability between them.”

“We’re actually quite pleased with the progress the companies have made so far in the early stages of this relationship,” added Hank Vigil, Microsoft corporate vice president of consumer strategy and partnerships.

The two companies have had weekly meetings between relationship managers to check progress and to resolve issues. There have also been 15 executive meetings and monthly meetings between engineers.

In the Web services realm, the two vendors have co-authored four Web services specifications in the past six months. These include WS-Addressing, which was submitted to the W3C, as well as WS-Eventing, WS-MetadataExchange, and WS-Management.

One analyst said the interoperability pact is significant but doesn’t break much new ground because the Web services standards efforts preceded the partnership.

“The key benefit is interoperability. Both vendors want to be perceived as open,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink.

In another sign of progress, Microsoft is referring customers who want Java on Windows to Sun’s JVM because Microsoft’s JVM is not being upgraded. The two companies are working to ensure Java products run well on Windows.

To improve customer experience, the companies have forged a more formalized business relationship, working to provide resolution of technical issues between products. The companies are also planning a Competency Center in Redmond, Wash., to allow Sun to conduct in-depth testing of real-world apps.

The vendors also cited Sun’s achieving VeriTest certification for Sun Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition, Sun Java System Access Manager, and Sun Java System Identity Manager running reliably on Windows Server. Sun is also planning to validate Access Manager and Identity Manager functionality in identity management scenarios using Microsoft Active Directory as the directory for user credentials.

Identity is key to the arrangement. “We agree that browser authentication is an area where we could probably do some great work jointly,” but there is nothing to announce at the moment, said Andrew Layman, director of distributed systems interoperability at Microsoft. Announcements on interoperability between identity products are expected next year, according to Microsoft.

Work toward deploying Windows on Sun systems has resulted in Sun’s AMD Opteron servers and workstations being certified by Windows Hardware Quality Labs as “Designed for Windows.”

“We want to ensure that our hardware platforms are supporting the major operating systems,” Papadopoulos said, referring to Solaris and Windows.

In storage, Sun is supporting Microsoft storage APIs, including Virtual Disk Service and Volume Copy Shadow Service on Sun StorEdge 6920 storage arrays. The 6920 has also received the “Designed for Windows” logo, intended to simplify midrange storage provisioning on Microsoft’s SQL Server and Exchange platforms.