"Sun views SOA as the fundamental evolution of distributed computing, enabling enterprises to better leverage and integrate IT assets while increasing flexibility to achieve near-term return on investment from business transformation and consolidation," said Mark Bauhaus, vice president, Java Web Services, Sun Microsystems. "Sun is consistently delivering on our promise of allowing customers to bring about necessary IT changes with a flexible, standards-based and services-based infrastructure."

Sun's SOA announcement includes the availability of the latest web services toolkit  to address the performance bottleneck associated with XML processing. The Sun Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP) 1.6 provides early access to new web services technologies and APIs, giving developers an opportunity to evaluate and familiarize themselves in advance of general availability in Sun products.

A major feature in this version of Java WSDP is the industry's first implementation of Fast Infoset, standardizing the application of binary encoding/decoding to the XML Infoset for improved processing performance and throughput. Internal test results show web services perform 150% to 400% faster when using Fast Infoset encoding of XML, with no changes required to the application, to take advantage of the higher performance.

Providing the foundation for next-generation SOA applications, Sun also announced today support for the Java Business Integration (JBI) specification and the first fully open sourced Java Enterprise Service Bus (Java ESB) built on this specification. JBI provides the foundation for SOA by allowing enterprises to more rapidly implement business integration applications at a lower cost, while extending its capabilities to meet diverse business and IT requirements.

Other significant steps Sun is taking to deliver on its SOA strategy include:

• Demonstrating new levels of integration, upcoming Sun Java Studio Enterprise software will include feature sets to speed the development of process-driven SOA-based applications with integrated support for service orchestration, visual service creation and data transformation;
• Availability of Sun Java Studio Creator 2 Early Access, enabling developers to consume data services and visually develop Java standard web and portlet applications, thereby making it easier to deploy applications that leverage an investment in SOA;
• Availability of the Sun Service Registry, the first registry to support both UDDI v.3 and ebXML Registry 3.0 standards, for customers who need to discover, track and manage increasing numbers of web services, serving as a cornerstone for true SOA governance;
• Availability of Sun's leading web services-based identity management portfolio, allowing customers to quickly build interoperable, federated identity and authentication services between multiple partners. Coupled with its close integration into the Sun Java Enterprise System (Java ES), Sun Java Identity Management Suite delivers a secure, identity-based platform for SOA;
• Open Sourcing the Java Systems Application Server Platform Edition 9.0, bringing the source of compatible web services directly to the open source community;
• Enabling the foundation for an open, reliable and secure SOA through new features to be included in upcoming releases of Java ES, supporting the the development and deployment of composite applications, federated single sign-on across service domains, reliable and secure messaging, and service monitoring and management;
• Availability of SOA Path consulting services, allowing customers to access Sun's SOA implementation expertise at critical points in the SOA technology lifecycle ranging from SOA Workshops and Assessments to establishing a SOA Center of Excellence.