Patrick Logan sent me an email in response to my GXA posts asking an important question: is any of this real? I have to admit that I started looking at GXA not because of some special insight that it was the real thing, but only with the thought that the issues being addressed are real and this was as good a place as any to start my study.

A quick search on google for "WS Routing" yields sample code, an experimental implementations and a sample client plus the specification references. So, at least with respect to routing, a cursory examination would conclude that its not real...yet. I add the "yet" because I think that even if GXA isn't the answer, something similar will have to be invented to take its place. The issues definitely are real.

I've written about application layer internetworking before and mentioned some of the companies in that space. I found another tonight: Talking Blocks. Their product looks interesting. They make no mention of the GXA specifications, but they do make mention of the problems. I think it remains to be seen whether these standards will be adopted by these nascent companies or not. Maybe Microsoft and IBM have enough clout to force the standards, but so far they don't have products that use the standards either as far as I can tell. How the market will address these issues will probably surprise us all.