This article introduces Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), a specification for data sharing among educational software applications that has grown to 10 disparate software applications. This new version (code name Columbus) is likely to give districts more vendors to choose from--maybe a lot more--because it will be arriving with a profound upgrade: full support for web services. To appreciate what web services support means in the life of this evolving spec, the author describes a couple of things about the architecture that makes it work and discusses how SIF came by its code name "Columbus." Without the kind of integration that SIF allows, districts simply couldn't make the most of their data, which would then make it impossible for them to carry out an essential part of their educational mission.