The companies said engineers are jointly working through the details on interoperability between the Sun-backed Liberty and Microsoft’s WS-specifications.
No date was given for delivery, although Microsoft director of distributed systems interoperability Andrew Layman promised: We are making very solid progress on making that happen.
One of the things we’ve heard from customers is they’d like to build systems that work in both directions, Layman added.
Microsoft and Sun detailed their plans during the first major update on progress in the companies’ technology sharing agreement and legal settlement, announced in April.
During the eight months since the cessation of hostilities between Microsoft and Sun, the companies have worked on WS-Addressing, WS-Eventing, WS-Metadata Exchange specifications, rounding out Microsoft’s web services roadmap.
The companies are also developing WS-Management, to enable systems using Microsoft’s Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) and Sun’s N1 to communicate. DSI is Microsoft’s autonomic computing initiative for Windows-based systems.
Sun’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Greg Papadopoulos said the relationship between Sun and Microsoft was more than just a standards initiative, though. I wouldn’t be involved at this level, [Bill] Gates wouldn’t be involved at this level if this was just standards. We are solving hard technical problems. Papadopoulos said.
Other work since has seen Sun’s directory server, access manager and identity manager certified for Windows, while Microsoft’s volume task storage has been certified to Sun’s 6920 storage arrays. Sun’s AMD hardware has also been certified for Windows.
Additionally, the companies are holding regular meetings between management, engineers and dedicated relationship managers, while the companies have also established a Chief Technology Officers (CTO) advisory council.
This relationship goes is a 180 degree u-turn. Nine months ago we were slashing each other’s tires, Papadopoulos said.
