(March 27, 2003) - Mark Hapner, chief Web services strategist at Sun Microsystems, and Andy Astor, vice president of Enterprise Web Services at webMethods have been elected to the board of directors for the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I). Sun and webMethods will join founding board members Accenture, BEA Systems, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. The terms for the two newly elected directors will begin on April 1, 2003. Hapner will serve for two years, and Astor for one year. Starting in 2004, elected members will each serve for two years, while founding members have permanent seats.

"Sun's election to the WS-I board demonstrates that there is broad industry alignment in the push to establish a set of converged and open standards for Web services," said Mark Hapner. "We are pleased to have the endorsement of the vendor and user community, and are determined to make a valuable contribution to this important industry effort."

Sun would have preferred involvement in WS-I as a founding member, with the permanent seat that goes with that status. Sun began participating in the WS-I last October as a contributing member. Hapner commented, "I think at this point we're working within the charter of the organization and our plan is, of course, to make a strong contribution, playing an important role in the organization." Sun's Java platform is a major environment for Web services deployment.

"We are honored to have been selected to the WS-I board by the companies most involved in propelling Web services into the mainstream," said Andy Astor. "webMethods is excited about the opportunity in front of us, and we look forward to working closely with the WS-I board and the general membership to promote industry-wide interoperability. webMethods will diligently work to uphold the trust that's been placed in us, and we will use our seven-year history of Web services development to contribute to the greater body of knowledge of the WS-I." webMethods already serves in several roles within WS-I, including a prominent position in the Basic Profile Working Group as one of the editors of the WS-I Basic Profile. webMethods hopes to represent the interests of small-to-medium sized companies that make up the bulk of WS-I's membership.

The board of the WS-I will set the agenda for the standards group for the coming year. The group is expected to focus on Web services security standards and reliable messaging specifications, continuing the group's overall goal to publish guidelines, or profiles, that encourage interoperabililty between standards-compliant software. Basic Profile 1.0 , which focuses on building Web services using SOAP, WSDL and UDDI, is expected to be released in May.

Cape Clear Software, Nokia, SeeBeyond and VeriSign were unsuccessful in their bids to serve on the board.