Joachim Breitsprecher from our partner company d-serv told me about this interesting article[1]:

[quote]
Does an organization have anything to gain from .Net?

Despite a vaguely defined purpose, no track record and several known risks, organizations are starting to implement projects based in .Net. Carmine Mangione delves into the .Net enigma and explains why jumping on the .Net bandwagon – like blindly adopting any technology without first weighing the pros and cons – could potentially sink your organization.
[/quote]

We fully agree with the author that despite the hype concerning SOAP, WSDL & Co., these technologies are currently too imature to be used in reliable software infrastructures on a broad scale. Furthermore, we are very concerned with the latest decisions of IBM and Microsoft to leave the W3C standardization gremium for Web Services. It seems like the good old HTTP/URL mechanisms are still the best way to go, because the level of abstraction offered by the REST model[2], is much more convenient and manageable than Web Services.

[1] http://www.linuxworld.com/go.cgi?id=742092
[2] http://www.ebuilt.com/fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm