CIO — MuleSource's Dan Diephouse told us in a separate article why he believes UDDI sucks. In this point/counterpoint, Microsoft's Steven Martin, senior director of product management in the Connected Systems Division, takes the floor to rebut Diephouse's assertions. Here, he tells us why UDDI rocks.

This is all the more timely given Microsoft's recent and upcoming news regarding making model-driven development a core part of the Microsoft platform. The company recently caused hell to freeze over when it joined former arch-rival the Object Management Group (anyone care to reminisce about the glorious days of the COM vs. CORBA war?).

And this month the company will demo Oslo, its modeling framework upon which Microsoft's "Dynamic IT" strategy turns. That's Microsoft-speak for, among other things, "SOA made easier." And of course, in some circles—Microsoft orbs especially—a key component of SOA is the UDDI.

With MuleSource's permission, I shared Diephouse's comments about UDDI with Martin, who provided the following response. Consider this Microsoft's counterpoint. And keep your eyes on the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference next month, when Oslo will debut.

(This text is verbatim, with the exception of some minor grammatical edits.)

"Six years ago, SOAP was something you washed your hands with, and cross-vendor system interoperability was a major obstacle facing CIOs and architects. Today, Web services technologies are ubiquitous. Every CIO worth his or her salt has a strategy for where Web services fits into the portfolio of IT investments.

"Nearly every major system, whether custom-built or off-the-shelf, includes a Web services interface for extensibility and interoperability. Consider a few pieces just from Microsoft: any Web services client—.Net, Java, PHP, Python, Visual Basic, C#, you name it—can connect to Exchange Server to retrieve schedules or to send e-mail messages.

"An Excel spreadsheet can collect data from an underwriting application implemented in Java. Any Web services client can connect to SQL Server or to SharePoint Server. A PHP application running on Linux can send a computation out to the Excel Services engine. A ColdFusion page can kick-off a business process hosted in BizTalk Server.

"The beauty of this is that all major software vendors support it—Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP—as well as smaller targeted vendors who supply call center applications, human resources applications, or manufacturing control systems. SOAP is everywhere. You can even manage your Cisco or F5 gear over SOAP.

"This is not about the bits-and-bytes. Web services bring business value today. We all know [that] no company conducts business exclusively within their four walls. The broad industry support for Web services means you can stitch together systems from different vendors, or integrate major building blocks from partners and acquired companies. That brings real business agility benefits.

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