Bill Gates - "Building Software That Is Interoperable By Design"

Bill Gates, in a letter posted on Microsoft's web site, tells employees, customers, and others says "the solution that has proven consistently effective – and the one that yields the greatest success for developers today – is a strong commitment to interoperability". He talks about the work Microsoft is doing with industry partners to "advance a new generation of software that is interoperable by design, reducing the need for custom development and cumbersome testing and certification".

The letter goes on to mention the XML-based architecture for Web services, known as WS-* ("WS-Star"), being development with IBM, Sun, Oracle, BEA and others. Microsoft launched a new Interoperability web site with technical information.

For years, Borland has been committed to open standards and interoperability between heterogenious systems. Our Software Delivery Optimization vision and strategy allows our customers to maximize the the business value of software. It's great to see Bill Gates commit Microsoft to working with other companies (including Borland) for the benefit of our customers trying to integrate disparate platforms and systems. You can also find out more information about our web services support at http://www.borland.com/webservices/.

There are several other ways to develop interoperable applications across heterogenious systems. Borland supports CORBA for the development and deployment of distributed enterprise applications that are scalable, flexible, and easily maintained. If you need to build secure, reliable, and high-performance applications that interoperate between Microsoft® .NET Framework applications and J2EE™ and CORBA® infrastructures, check out Borland Janeva.

Borland is a member the Object Management Group and the Web Services Interoperability Organization.

I applaud Bill Gates for writing and publishing his letter. Our industry will continue to thrive when we all work together to help our customers (and our world).