IBM, HP Release Proposed Web Services Standard: Page 3 of 3

While specification work appears to be progressing, enterprises may have to wait a bit for product incorporating these standards. While the vendors plan to ship product, most are at the stage of letting the specifications provide the guide to their overall technology strategies.

"IBM (for example) has a logical plan for tying all this together," Schmelzer said. "This specification is aimed at contributing to that cohesive framework."

Besides WS-Nofification, IBM, HP, Sonic Software Corp. and Tibco released WS-Resources Framework, a description of how to handle application communications related to expiration of contracts and service level agreements, deleting products from inventory systems and other processes.