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Microsoft have today announced the availability of two new tools that will enable new user experiences by integrating the power and efficiency of XML Web services and the familiar computing environment of Office XP.

These new Office XP tools are important steps in realizing the Microsoft .NET vision because they enable developers to combine the best of XML Web services with the rich services of Office XP to deliver new, exciting user experiences.

"XML Web services are valuable to all types of users and will eventually pervade the computing environment in the home and the workplace. A key to enabling this is connecting XML Web services to the Office experience," said Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Office at Microsoft. "These Office XP tools are yet another example of Microsoft equipping software developers with the tools they need to leverage today's technology and create new opportunities for commerce and productivity gains."

The Office XP Web Services Toolkit enables developers to discover and integrate XML Web services into Office XP solutions directly from within the Visual Basic® for Applications editor.

• Quickly discover XML Web services using the standards-based UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) service
• Integrate XML Web services directly into Office XP solutions with a single click

The Smart Tag Enterprise Resource Toolkit provides a roadmap on how best to plan, architect, implement and deploy robust and scalable smart tags within the enterprise.

• A robust sample, with complete source code, which illustrates how XML Web services can be used to structure and develop an enterprise smart tag solution
• A set of whitepapers on planning, implementing and deploying enterprise smart tags, along with a set of tools that enable developers to more efficiently develop smart tag solutions

News Source: Microsoft Press Release - New Microsoft Office XP Tools bring XML Web Services to knowledge workers
Download: "Office XP Web Services Toolkit" and "Smart Tag Enterprise Resource Toolkit" (available sometime on 14th January)

These capabilities are crucial underpinnings that will provide the foundation for Sun's push into distributed grid computing, he said. A core premise of this developing computing model is that servers will automatically come online to provide additional capacity as needed. But that process cannot happen until servers can dynamically discover and replicate new environments.

Ingram said that these and other capabilities inherent in Solaris will provide the foundation that will allow Sun and its allies to counter the vision put forth by Microsoft in its .Net architecture, which ultimately envisions a world where applications automatically discover and integrate with one another using Web services.

In contrast, Sun will use Web services to link loosely coupled applications, while relying on Java to link tightly coupled applications.

"In Microsoft's view of the world, everything is based on XML and loosely coupled applications. We see a need for loosely coupled applications and tightly coupled applications using Java," Ingram said.

Industry analysts said the war over the next generation of distributed computing between Microsoft and Sun is far from over.

Rikki Kirzner, research director at IDC in Mountain View, Calif., said the battle will not be won on the basis of one or two tools. Market penetration, cost-effectiveness of implementation, and ease of use will be the critical customer drivers, she said. "The companies have to make the solutions real," Kirzner said, commenting that vendors need to do more than simply adopt standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).

Microsoft, IBM, and Computer Associates are also working on technology to control and manage distributed computing environments to deliver Web services. But Sun may beat its rivals to the punch. Sun's hardware and OS components are stand-alone and proprietary, making the groundwork for development specific and more efficient, said Gordon Haff, a senior analyst at Illuminata, in Nashua, N.H.