HP enters web services market

Hewlett Packard (HP) yesterday unveiled NetAction, a software suite for developing web services, which it claims will link Microsoft's .Net and Sun Microsystems' One Net environments.

NetAction pulls together HP's existing products, including its eSpeak middleware, HP Process Manager, a set of tools for building e-services applications, and the Java and XML-based application servers it inherited from its $470m acquisition of Bluestone Software.

Kevin Kilroy, former Bluestone chief executive, and now vice president and general manager of HP's middleware division, said: "By integrating Bluestone, HP is leveraging a highly competitive application server based on vendor-neutral Java, Java 2 Enterprise Edition and XML standards that are also compatible with .Net environments."

Analysts believe NetAction is HP's delayed reaction to the recent rash of web services software which began with the launch of Microsoft's .Net. Although HP officials claim NetAction is different because most of the software that is included in the platform is already out in the market, it acknowledges that it has yet to create a programme that would attract developers.

Rob Enderle, an analyst at research company Giga Information Group, believes that web services from HP and IBM could act as "marriage brokers" for Java and .Net, but that HP's downfall is its weakness in getting its point of view across. "[The web services space] is a marketing fight and HP is not good at that," he said.

Gartner analyst Yefim Natis agreed and added that HP must also come out with a development infrastructure and an application integration backbone. He explained that NetAction misses elements that define web services via user interfaces, and that tools such as those from Bowstreet and ObjectSpace allow developers to create solutions around existing applications.

"HP fails to impress the market with breakthrough vision on why web services are important," he said.