Sun turns up the heat on IBM and Microsoft

Finds an extra gear for the web services offensive...

Sun's web services strategy shifted up a gear this morning with the launch of an off-the-shelf collection of applications for its Sun Fire servers. The not-so-snappily named Application Services Reference Architecture is designed to turn Sun Fire servers into web services platforms with pre-designed and tested XML- and Soap-based applications. The move comes less than 24 hours after announcing partnerships with Oracle and Agile Software for the Sun One initiative in an attempt to keep up with IBM and Microsoft's strategies.