Indigo to Aid Web Services Development

With Indigo, the code name for Microsoft’s implementation of key Web services standards, Microsoft hopes to take service-oriented architectures (SOAs), particularly those that use Web services, from the bleeding edge to the mainstream. Indigo will provide a common Windows infrastructure to help developers more easily build new Web services and integrate existing applications. Indigo will also serve as a common infrastructure for several existing Web services environments, such as ASP.NET and the COM+ Enterprise Services, ensuring a consistent set of Web services features regardless of the programming environment chosen by the developer.

Services Take Center Stage

Many organizations are driving costs down by integrating applications and systems across OSs and middleware platforms. If applications can be integrated, information can be transferred directly from one system to another, increasing efficiency and speed and reducing errors that can occur when data is manually entered or reentered. In addition, important business logic can sometimes be centralized in a single application, eliminating redundancies and streamlining deployment.