News.com has a great article on Web Rivalries that is worth a read.
“Web services–the technology heralded as a way to connect incompatible software–is suffering from a communications breakdown as rival alliances jockey to establish standards.
In a mark of an increasingly contentious standards-setting process, two factions–represented by Microsoft on one side and Sun Microsystems on the other–have developed competing proposals for the reliable delivery of messages in Web services applications.” [News.com]