B2B and IT standards... interesting paper and Gartner's view

["Roger Bass" <roger@traxian.com>]

In view of the discussion about ebXML and WS-*, I wanted to share a couple of things that seem potentially relevant.
 
This paper http://www.w3.org/2007/01/wos-papers/gall <http://www.w3.org/2007/01/wos-papers/gall>  (from a Gartner VP no less), talks about how the whole WS-* stack is actually antithetical to web architecture principles, and calls for a new focus at the W3C on a set of A2A protocols (and by implication, B2B as a subset) that are more weblike, leaving the big IT middleware vendors to evolve WS-* on their own.  He also makes some interesting points about how web-like resource architectures are inherently more viral, ie may proliferate faster (though he doesn't quite say it like that).
 
Separately, but quite related I think, Gartner's B2B research leads are articulating a vision that explicitly states that B2B infrastructure will become the infrastructure for IT outsourcing.  And with services in the cloud proliferating and increasingly valuable, the architecture for IT outsourcing will increasingly become the architecture for IT, period.
 
So, an interesting hypothesis emerges - whatever standards and technologies win in B2B eventually win everywhere.
 
The Danish paper implicitly argues the other way around - WS-* is winning within the enterprise, so it will win in B2B. The points here suggest that that may not necessarily be so.
 
Regards,
Roger