Bowstreet, Divine, Documentum, Epicentric, Factiva, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Interwoven, IONA, Oracle, Plumtree Software, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, SilverStream Software, Sun Microsystems, and Others Collaborate to Standardize Integration of Visual, User-Facing Web Services in Portals

Boston, MA, USA; 28 January 2002 -- OASIS, the XML interoperability consortium, today announced its members have formed the OASIS Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) Technical Committee to create an XML and Web services standard that will allow the plug-n-play of visual, user-facing Web services with portals or other intermediary Web applications. These WSRP services will enable businesses to provide content or applications in a form that does not require any manual or application-specific adaptation by consuming portals and applications.

"Once a WSRP service has been published to a public directory, portal administrators will be able to locate and dynamically integrate it with just a few mouse clicks," explained Thomas Schaeck of IBM, chair of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee. "WSRP will enable distributed portal systems where portals share portlets as visual, user-facing Web services for integration with other portals."

WSRP will allow remote portlet Web services to be implemented in a variety of ways, including Java/J2EE and Microsoft's .NET platform. WSRP services will be built on standard technologies including SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL.

"To ensure reuse and compatibility, the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee will work closely with other OASIS Web services initiatives, especially the OASIS Web Services Interactive Applications (WSIA) Technical Committee," said Karl Best, director of technical operations for OASIS. He noted that the group also plans to harmonize WSRP with existing Web application programming models (e.g., Portals/Portlets) and the work of the W3C (e.g., XForms, DOM, XML Events, XPath, XLink, XML Component API task force). "A fundamental operating principal of OASIS is to enable convergence and avoid overlap whenever possible," added Best.

Members of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee include consortium sponsors, Bowstreet, Divine, Documentum, Epicentric, Factiva, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Interwoven, IONA, Oracle Corp., Plumtree Software, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, SilverStream Software, Sun Microsystems, and other OASIS members. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals interested in advancing Web services for remote portals. Information on joining OASIS can be found on http://www.oasis-open.org/join.

OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment on WSRP, and completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees.

Industry Support for WSRP

"The WSRP initiative promises to enable Web services to be easily consumed by portals, while promoting interoperability among all platforms," said Brian Pearson, Web Services Architect, Bowstreet.

"Documentum sees Web services as an integral component in the evolution of enterprise content management," said Una Kearns, XML architect for Documentum (NASDAQ: DCTM) and member of the board of directors for OASIS. "Standardizing the mechanism for plug-n-play integration of user-facing Web services into portals is key to our overall vision. This will enable developers to easily incorporate content management capabilities in applications and deliver content through a variety of channels--reducing the total cost and time necessary to integrate and deploy Web and portal infrastructures. We are delighted to work with our partners and other industry leaders, under OASIS, to further this important area of work."

"The OASIS WSRP effort confirms our belief that standards-based, XML integration technologies are the future of the portal market," said Ed Anuff, chief strategy officer of Epicentric. "WSRP validates our vision of dynamic, plug and play integration between portals and back-end applications via portlets, and will offer significant benefits to customers and ISVs attempting to lower the cost of portal integration across vendor platforms."

"Fujitsu will actively participate in the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee, as this standardization effort will promote an open standard in the portal market, while providing a standard framework for connecting portal server and Web services," said Mr. Mitsuhiro Hashimoto, General Manager of Application Server Software Division, Software Group, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702). "Fujitsu's portal server, INTERSTAGE PortalWorks, will support the future standard, which will enable it to become an integration platform for Web Services from multiple providers, beyond simply providing a front-end delivery channel for these services."

"The ability to extend applications as Web services through a standardized remote portal interface will simplify application delivery and increase scalability. The OASIS WSRP will provide a means for portal applications to be deployed transparently to many different vendor portals," said Michael Karasick, CTO of IBM's Pervasive Computing Division.

"The time is ripe for defining standard interfaces for portals to make use of Web services,"" said Jack Jia, CTO of Interwoven, Inc (Nasdaq: IWOV). "WSRP will make it easier and cheaper for our customers to migrate, manage, tag and deliver business-critical content through their portals."

"As a long-time strong supporter of open standards, Oracle is pleased to participate in the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee," said Marco Tilli, Vice President of Portal and Hosted Tools at Oracle Corp. "The ability to access remote portlets via Web Services will play an important role in transforming the way content and applications are integrated into portals."

"Plumtree is committed to the development of the WSRP standard in order to help portal customers integrate new applications and services into the portal quickly and easily, increasing the value of their software investments," said Plumtree CEO, John Kunze. "Plumtree has been at the forefront of Web services development long before the term became an industry buzz word, and we hope our experience will contribute to the creation of a standard that promotes greater interoperability between portal technologies, in order to help the market grow."

"The work of the OASIS WSRP TC is a critical first step in defining the ways in which Web services are exposed to the end user, accelerating the potential for shared portlets or components and enabling a broader channel distribution of these services," said Jeffrey Broberg, vice president of research and development, eBusiness Solutions for SilverStream Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSSW). "SilverStream is committed to providing our customers with standards-based products that offer the highest levels of choice and flexibility, and we're pleased to be working with the OASIS WSRP TC on this project."

About OASIS
OASIS (www.oasis-open.org), a not-for-profit, global consortium, drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS is the home for XML conformance, Web services, security, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and other interoperability specifications development.

OASIS has more than 400 corporate and individual members in 100 countries around the world. OASIS and the United Nations jointly sponsor ebXML, a global framework for e-business data exchange. OASIS operates XML.org, a community clearinghouse for XML application schemas, vocabularies and related documents. OASIS also hosts The XML Cover Pages, an online reference collection for interoperable markup language standards.

For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209