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F5 Networks and Forum Systems have joined the WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization). At first glance, the news seems innocuous. Forum Systems delivers an XML security device for use in conjunction with Web services, and F5 offers content-aware switches, which may encounter Web services traffic.

Dig deeper. The WS-I tests Web services for compatibility. While it still makes sense for Forum Systems to dirty its hands in such a forum, why would F5? Before you answer, zip over to the F5 site and brush up on iControl. I'll wait.

Got it now? That's right. F5's iControl is a Web-services-enabled method of controlling its line of Big-IP products. It's also a way for the Big-IP product line to receive information from applications regarding their health. This is used to determine how to balance incoming traffic.

Yeah, baby. We've been so focused on how Web services will enable applications we've turned our backs on the networking guys who produced one of the first truly innovative and usable Web services around. By letting an application or any other service determine when enough is enough, traffic can be more efficiently routed and handled by network devices. F5 is using Web services to make the network infrastructure more responsive to the needs of individual apps--which is what we've wanted all along but couldn't have because no developer wanted to play with SNMP. I know I didn't.

But with Web services, an application can take more control. So while software developers have been enabling their applications with Web services without a real goal in mind, the network-device vendors are moving toward productive uses of Web services.

--Lori MacVittie