HP joins Sun and Microsoft alliance

Hewlett Packard has joined an online listings initiative led by Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, despite comments from chief executive Carly Fiorina that questioned the group's openness.

Hewlett Packard (HP) has joined an online listings initiative led by Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, despite comments from chief executive Carly Fiorina that questioned the group's openness.

At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo last week, Fiorina questioned whether the group that is developing the Universal Description Discover and Integration (UDDI) framework was "a cartel designed to drive things towards the advantages of certain vendors".

But in a statement last week, HP confirmed that it had joined the movement, which is backed by 30 other vendors.

Bill Russell, vice president and general manager of software and solutions at HP, said: "Our decision to join is further proof of HP's leadership in adopting open standards. A new generation of software is being developed for services-based computing. As the industry builds on this new infrastructure, it is important that these emerging technologies include UDDI."

As part of the agreement, HP will contribute its eSpeak middleware to the initiative. The vendor had previously considered UDDI as a potential rival to the product.