How Open Is HailStorm?
Microsoft claims that HailStorm services are nothing more than “industry standard” Web services. Although they use Microsoft Passport for authentication, any platform can access HailStorm services because they rely on industry standards such as XML, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL. To back up this claim, Microsoft has already demonstrated HailStorm services running on Palm, Macintosh, Sun Solaris, and Linux systems. No doubt, more will follow, because any platform that can generate and receive industry-standard SOAP messages can access these services. Despite the use of industry standards, Microsoft has stated repeatedly that HailStorm services will run best and be easiest to develop on Microsoft products, even though they do not require any Microsoft product or runtime. The use of Passport is particularly controversial: Microsoft could have chosen to perform HailStorm authentication using third-party authentication services or allowing a UDDI lookup for other available identity services. Clearly
