That's a really good point. Certainly the product vendors had the same motivations. But at the time I was often disappointed when I listened to the conversation

That's a really good point. Certainly the product vendors had the same motivations. But at the time I was often disappointed when I listened to the conversations of developers I worked with, because I rarely heard anyone draw parallels between the two. It was frustrating to work on projects where we'd be six months in and people would be surprised that the ORBs - er, I mean web service platforms - had difficulties talking to one another.