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Conclusion
SOAP 1.0 was released in September 1999 as a joint effort of Don Box of DevelopMentor, and several engineers from Microsoft. It was not very well received by IBM and Sun, who were working on a similar but more ambitious effort called ebXML. IBM later changed its mind and became one of the key players in the development of the SOAP 1.1 specification of April 2000. Sun followed suit. Support of the three largest software companies in the world gave SOAP a great chance of succeeding.
From the developers' perspective, on the face of it SOAP just appears to be an XML wrapper around procedure calls to help client programs communicate with servers (through firewalls) across the Internet. However, if one digs deeper, one can appreciate the ability to integrate their code with various services (Web services) from one or more vendors to create the desired custom software solution. From the Web service provider's perspective this would have several benefits as well. The providers will be able to choose their own development platform and language.
Security, however, remains a key concern. This aspect is being looked into the current SOAP specification.
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