UDDI v2 Ratified as OASIS Open Standard; Building Block for Web Services Advances Within Open Process.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 20, 2003

The OASIS interoperability consortium today announced that its members have approved the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration specification (UDDI) version 2.0 as an OASIS Open Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. UDDI enables companies and applications to dynamically publish, locate, and use Web services.

Uttam Narsu, Vice President, Forrester Research, Inc. noted, "While UDDI has not been as widely adopted as SOAP and WSDL, UDDI v2, under the aegis of OASIS, offers a concrete step to the widely anticipated version 3 specification. We foresee UDDI adoption as critical to the realization of a service-oriented architecture, and expect to see a significant increase in its adoption over the next two years."

"We came to OASIS with the goal of advancing UDDI into a recognized industry standard with support and input from the broadest possible range of constituents," recalled Luc Clement of Microsoft, co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. "UDDI's ratification as an OASIS Open Standard indicates our success in establishing an interoperable, cross-industry standard that provides a cornerstone for the Web services architecture."

Members of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee include Computer Associates, Fujitsu, IBM, IONA, Microsoft, Novell, OpenNetwork, Oracle, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, Tata Consultancy Services, and others.

According to Tom Bellwood of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee, "UDDI v2 is being widely implemented today. It provides powerful features like business relationships and external taxonomy validation. As OASIS now continues moving version 3 towards a standard, with its support of multi-registry environments and digital signature features, we expect the use of UDDI in all environments to expand even further."

Before becoming an OASIS Open Standard, UDDI v2 first completed an extensive public review and was approved by the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. Then, the specification demonstrated its readiness through multiple implementations, after which UDDI was reviewed and approved by the OASIS membership as a whole.

"Through OASIS, the key players, large and small, have joined together to advance UDDI within an open process," said Karl Best, vice president of OASIS. "OASIS is pleased to provide a forum, not only for UDDI, but also for so much of the Web services standardization work being done."

The growing portfolio of OASIS Open Standards and specifications for Web services includes UDDI as well as the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL), the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM), WS-Security, Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM), ebXML, Universal Business Language (UBL), and others. OASIS currently has more than 50 active technical committees.

Industry Support for UDDI

Computer Associates:

"As the catalog for Web services, UDDI will play a critical role in the management of enterprise Web service environments," said Bilhar Mann, director, eTrust product management and marketing at Computer Associates. "CA is clearly committed to optimizing the value that our customers gain from UDDI technology, as is demonstrated by both our incorporation of UDDI into eTrust Directory and our broader Web services management and security development initiatives."

DataPower:

"DataPower believes that advanced registries and repositories are an essential component of the broader XML-aware network infrastructure. UDDI has the potential to do for server-to-server communication what DNS did for the Internet, by making it much easier and cheaper to connect and stay connected to services. So that, for example, DataPower's network devices will be able to use UDDI to automatically route, secure and transform Web services requests," said Eugene Kuznetsov, founder, chairman and CTO, DataPower Technology.

Hewlett-Packard

"HP is pleased to support the nomination of UDDI v2 to become an OASIS Open Standard," said Russ Daniels, vice president and chief technology officer, HP Software Global Business Unit. "This level of acceptance by the broad OASIS community is an important indication of not only UDDI support, but also support for OASIS' work in standards for Web services."

IBM:

"UDDI is a key open technology for Web services and the deployment of Services Oriented Architectures," said Karla Norsworthy, Director of Dynamic e-business Technologies for IBM. "IBM supports UDDI in its industry leading WebSphere Application Server V5 because of UDDI's importance for publication and discovery of services both within and across enterprises. We are thrilled that the work we started with industry partners has now reached the important stage of being an OASIS Open Standard and are confident that this will encourage even greater global adoption of the technology."

Intel:

"Intel Corporation is a supporter and active contributor of UDDI - a key component in the Web services stack," said Colin Evans, Director of system software research at Intel Research and Development, and an Oasis Board Member. "With ratification of UDDI as an OASIS Open Standard, enterprises now have a truly open specification to deploy both private and public Web services, thus extending services to their business partners."

Novell:

"Novell believes that UDDI's role in services discovery will become increasingly more critical as the number of services in use within and across business boundaries continues to increase," said Winston Bumpus, Novell's director of standards. "Therefore, a standard registry and management paradigm is critical, which is why Novell developed the Novell Nsure UDDI Server based on our market-leading eDirectory software and subsequently released it to the open source community through our Novell Forge Web site. As a sponsor member of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee, Novell is pleased to support the release of UDDI v2, and we look forward to promoting its adoption in the developer community."

SAP:

"SAP AG supports UDDI v2 promotion to an OASIS Open Standard. UDDI has become a mature specification that advances interoperability in overall Web Services architectures," said Franz-Josef Fritz, VP Technology Architecture and Product Management, SAP AG. "SAP will continue to contribute to the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee in order to develop industry best practices for the optimal configuration of UDDI. SAP customers benefit from the UDDI support in SAP NetWeaver, SAP's integration and application platform."

SeeBeyond:

"As an active contributor to the development of the UDDI specification, SeeBeyond supports the approval of UDDI v2 as an OASIS Open Standard," said Alan Davies, vice president of standards for SeeBeyond. "SeeBeyond believes that UDDI represents a key component in the set of Web services standards aimed at facilitating application integration and business interchange, and will actively participate in the development of future versions of the UDDI specification."

VeriSign:

"As a company committed to integrating trust into all aspects of Web Services, VeriSign welcomes the security enhancements to UDDI v3," said Hemma Prafullchandra, strategic architect in the advance products and research group at VeriSign, Inc. "We are very encouraged by the tremendous progress the industry has been making through standards organizations like OASIS and look forward to continued progress on the trust and security fronts."

About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that 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 produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 2,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.