Sometimes, there exists the dichotomy between stating the blindingly obvious and the fact that the blindingly obvious still needs to be stated. The recent news that a Microsoft-sponsored survey, conducted by IDC, has shown that the need for interoperability between applications and tools is driving the growing acceptance of XML-based standards as the glue between them is a good case in point.

It is blindingly obvious that some form of interoperability standard

As SOA becomes more endemic across the user community, one of the most important developments in the future management of IT infrastructures is going to be creating the tools that can build the services and processes businesses require, from a resource pool of components. This will be the core task where any business requires a process to be run `now