This is a well-written and visionary article describing E-speak, an e-services operating environment developed prior to the turn of the millennium and the rise of the Web services technologies of today.

In a concise and clear way, the author explains what E-speak is, its design principles, and how it functions, without losing the reader in technological details. E-speak is basically an open software-based platform/environment in which unrelated e-services from different providers could work together according to the needs of the user.

Since the E-speak initiative was abandoned by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in favor of Web services technology, one could argue that this article is rather outdated. Nonetheless, it is written in a manner that maintains the enthusiasm and the originality of the author, and is therefore well worth reading.