Web Services Journal recently interviewed Theo Beack, Software AG's new Chief SOA Architect. Beack will be heading a new SOA Competency Center, to be based in the Washington, DC area. The Center will draw on the company's 30 years of global experience in developing sophisticated customer solutions in both the mainframe and XML data environments, according to Beack.

Swainson: 'Let's start by defining 'on demand.' First, on demand reflects what our customers are doing with their businesses - streamlining their business processes to make them more flexible and adaptive to new markets and opportunities. They use information technology as a tool to integrate these processes, so obviously IT is a critical enabler of on demand.'

Who Is David Litwack? Litwack is responsible for the development and advancement of Novell's secure Web services strategy, a position he assumed in July 2002 following Novell's acquisition of SilverStream Software, a company for which he'd served as president and CEO since 1997. He is also a member of Novell's Worldwide Management Committee. JDJ spoke with him on May 21, 2004 exclusively about a range of contemporary computing issues.

In the interview, conducted by Ivan Pedruzzi, Stylus Studio Senior Product Architect, and editor The Stylus Scoop, Dr. Kay provides an update on the exciting work being undertaken at the W3C on emerging XML technologies including XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, XQuery 1.0, and he shares his insights on how these technologies are likely to inter-operate and work alongside related XML technologies such as SQL/XML, and XML tools and components.

With brands sold in 180 markets around the world, British American Tobacco, the world's most international tobacco company, was looking for a way to access and analyze data to improve supply-chain performance. The IT department was charged with finding a new approach that would provide significant improvements over the traditional approach of gathering and storing data, transforming it into information, and generating reports.

Let's start with a high-level overview of WS-I and, if you can, highlight key members, new members, and what your broad mission statement is.

Web services are moving from the latest buzzword to a mature and accepted technology. Mainstream companies such as Eastman Chemical, Wells Fargo, and NEC have begun deploying significant Web Services-Based Integration (WSBI) projects.

Service discovery and identification is a critical piece of the overall Web services puzzle. Existing service architectures, such as CORBA, JINI, and ebXML, have all devoted significant effort towards making service discovery available and comprehensive. If Web services is to become a ubiquitous platform for service oriented computing, then the industry will need to create standards and products that enable sophisticated discovery, identification, and composition of Web services.

This month WSJ focuses on P2P architectures and grid computing, two topics that are gaining momentum in our industry. Over the past year or so I've read many excellent articles and books on these topics. However, getting a handle on what P2P and the grid are can be a challenge as implementations advance rapidly, major technologies are converging, and more people are applying these concepts to their particular disciplines.

Web Services Journal recently caught up with Steve Benfield, chief technology officer of SilverStream Software, for a quick look at SilverStream's new Web services environment, SilverStream eXtend.

Chris Hoofnagle, legislative counsel for EPIC, spoke exclusively to WSJ-IN, with more background on EPIC's efforts to ensure consumer privacy online. WSJ: Have you had any response from the states' attorneys general or the FTC? Chris Hoofnagle, EPIC: No, and we wouldn't expect to. The investigations are confidential, and EPIC would not be notified of the investigation until it was completed.

Having been endorsed by virtually every technology vendor on the planet, Web services are now evolving from 'feature' to 'fabric.' They are moving from the latest buzzword (hot new feature) to a mature and accepted technology (fabric of the technology landscape). The hype is fading; it is no longer interesting to develop Web services simply as a proof of technology, or as an end in themselves.