Predict the future of Web Services

original English version:
predicting the future of Web Services
learn how four business drivers cocould shape the evolution of Web Services in the enterprise.
by Robert Wegener
tech ed 2003 issue

although it's difficult to forecast what's in store for web services when they're still being defined, it's impossible to ignore business drivers that will affect the technology's future. in this article, I'll discuss how these drivers come into play given the assumption that the necessary standards are in place and the major players support them (see figure 1 ). the major business drivers include increased market share; offloading non-core business functionality; quick and easy business process integration and adaptability; and centralized, realtime availability of services regardless of platform. web services are the business-enabling tool to extend the enterprise both inside and outside the firewall, and, as I'll explain, these drivers have the potential to make this happen.

Increased market share is the biggest driver outside the firewall. the Web has enabled businesses to reach clients all over the world. by placing promotional links on other Web sites, businesses can funnel buyers to their sites. however, this technology has Buyers jumping from site to site, which increases the likelihood they'll lose interest and not make a purchase. businesses have tried to solve this issue by adding more content to their sites. but more isn' t always better and, in this case, it tends to dilute a company's core offerings.

Figure 1 stack it up

Web Services hold the greatest promise of providing businesses with the capability to offer the appearance of a one-stop shop. A business can use other vendors 'web services on its web site to provide access to content, and the user never leaves its site. for example, by independating Amazon's web services, an independent bookseller can provide access to the full inventory of books Amazon maintains. instead of sending the user to Amazon's site for a specific title, the title appears to be available within the bookseller's site, transparently to the user. the user experience is enhanced and both the reseller and Amazon share in the additional sale. the ability to provide services transparently to the end user enhances the overall shopping experience, allows smaller sites to provide more services at a lower cost, and lets the major industry players provide services to smaller firms at a competitive price.

Get down to basics
As companies return to a back-to-basics approach and shed operations that do little to enhance the bottom line, they're looking to offload non-core business functions to third parties who can do it better, faster, and cheaper. although senior company systems have become so tightly coupled to the core business process that they can't be removed without a major disruption to the business, other operations, such as external interfaces, are great candidates for outsourcing. by looking at the areas of a business that carry little risk (for example, Customer Call Centers) and/or have loosely-coupled functions (for example, company payroll and Benefit Administration ), companies can save billions of dollars. as companies focus on cost-saving measures and leverage outside systems, they open up tightly integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and supply chain applications. web services will drive this type of restructuring forward.

predicting the future of web services (continued)
sap's mysap.com e-business platform is a prime example. the mysap.com platform is based on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which enables enterprise-scale web services use. the Platform exposes sap's business-process solutions through Web Services, which allows the gateway to extend business processes and services beyond business boundaries. opening these previusly closed systems not only eases internal integration issues, but it also promotes external collaboration and enables organizations to offload non-core business functions that target specific areas of the business, such as order fulfillment and inventory control.

This model provides the basic template for the complete virtual corporation. you can view each business function as a component in a larger context, supported through loosely coupled business objects. this allows for rapid changes in supplier relationships, product/market alignment, and pricing structures. the virtual corporation can purchase functionality on the open market, regardless of borders and high-cost barriers to entry.

the platform will also provide a new business model for companies that want to target specific areas of the business. these new businesses might be sole providers of a service or act as brokers. web Services take on an intricate part of every business function. for this to work, Web Services will rely on Business Process Management (BPM) tools that can orchestrate the process flows and coordinate the execution of a collection of web services within the context of a business transaction. because orchestration and coordination are integral to most enterprise application integration (EAI) middleware, it's natural for the EAI middleware vendors to extend their offerings to embrace Web Services. the combination of solid BPM tools and solid web services standards and frameworks will complete the puzzle necessary to offload non-core business functionality.

Provide Business Process Integration
With the advent of a SOA, many middleware providers include web services as part of their product offerings. companies such as Vitria expose their integration solutions as web services to reduce the complexity of integrating internal applications and to extend these services to partners and industries external to the business (see resources ).

Exposing these processes as Web Services eliminates the labor-intensive and costly use of proprietary interfaces. in addition, Web Services provide the foundation for BPM necessary to change business processes quickly and easily to meet the evolving needs of the market, partners, and other applications.

It's important to note that web services-with future layers of orchestration, collaboration, and workflow standards-will be only a part of a larger picture of distributed services. you can configure CT today's middleware and application development tool vendors to extend web services to provide functionality and lack of use that will map business processes to application functions in a seamless fashion, regardless of platform, language, or device.
Predicting the future of web services (continued)

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integrated environments such as Microsoft's Visual Studio. net already provide a core framework to leverage, create, and consume web services in a seamless fashion. other Integrated environments such as IBM's WebSphere are extending their J2EE environments to inreceivate web services into an easy-to-use development platform. both. net and J2EE camps will enhance their web services products to further embrace bpm. in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to discover, bind, and execute web services dynamically, on the fly, and to coordinate the process flow through one integrated environment. this will allow for external web services to be widely adopted. because business relationships are contractual by nature, the need for service level agreements (SLAs), onfidentiality/security, and alternative suppliers is a must for any business providing or consuming Web Services.

As the number of businesses Publishing Web service grows, the industry will gravitate toward a brokerage model. brokers will provide service alternatives to guarantee 24/7 availability and help monitor/meter Web Services. they will also validate service providers and provide one-stop shopping for Web Services. brokers will align themselves with specific vertical industrial and become a defining force in future standards. this will parse lidate industry specific providers over time, which will feed an ever-increasing field of virtual configurations.

Centralize web services
Web services will greatly expand the availability of centralized real-time services, regardless of platform or device. they'll not only expose functionality, but Web Services will carry self-describing information to enable any device to consume or redistribute a service.

organizations have tried for years to provide a centralized view of the their individual services. the need to see an organization's information in real time and to make accurate business decisions based on that information is essential to future business planning. A central repository of web services can provide the Realtime view into the disparate systems throughout the organization. this doesn't alleviate the need for a data warehouse, nor does it work without a solid middleware infrastructure that supports bpm.

Centralizing process in real time through the advent of Web Services shocould induplicate ate a robust transformation product that can normalize responses from multiple systems and present specific data back to requesting services in real time in the correct format. transformation products can also be used to feed BPM tools to complete a well-rounded, realtime, centralized web services repository. ascential software's datastage product combined with BPM tools from Vitria, webmethods, IBM, Microsoft, and so on, will provide a firm base to create a centralized repository that's essential to the future of web services (see resources ).
Predicting the future of web services (continued)
Using Web Services to centralize processes is a complex endeavor. the tools you select shoshould provide graphical modeling of the business processes and transparently generate the Code necessary to communicate with the web services according to rules embedded in the model. the industry is moving towards XML language (XLANG) as one of several business process versions to become part of the Web Services stack, along with Web Services Flow Language (WSFL) as submitted by IBM. to remain competitive, BPM tool vendors will need to accept a standard business process language so their products can be interchangeable at the business service level. this will allow businesses to select the best BTM tool for their specific environment needs.

Web services outside the firewall are on the verge of a great leap forward. that leap will take place by way of new integrated development environments combined with Web Services Intermediaries (brokers ), which will provide the assurances and strong relationships necessary to promote a truly shared services architecture that crosses business boundaries.

if you want to get started now, you can combine transformation and BPM tools with Web Services integrated development environments from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, sun, and Bea to build a basic framework from which to grow on. it will be some time before the Web Services stack settles on workflow, collaboration, and orchestration standards. the strong BPM products available currently might be all you need for a long time to make Web services outside the firewall the true Holy Grail of a SOA.
about the author
Robert Wegener is the director of solutions for RCG It's Web Services, a provider of IT professional services. he has more than 20 years of information and business engineering experience in operations, customer service, transportation, finance, product development, telecommunications, and information systems.
predicting the future of Web Services: for Web Services in enterprises, explanation of how the four major business drivers build their development space
by Robert Wegener
tech ed 2003 issue

Although it is difficult to predict what to prepare for the term "Web service", we must not ignore the significant impact of business drivers on future technologies. In this article, the author assumes that, for these driving forces, it is necessary to set standards in a proper position, and the main competitors in the market provide support for them. Based on this assumption, to explore the role of these drivers (see figure 1 ). The main driving forces include: increasing market share, uninstalling some non-core business functions, fast and simple joint technology and good adaptability, integration, and cross-platform real-time service. At the same time, Web services are also a powerful tool inside and outside the firewall for enterprise business expansion. Therefore, as mentioned above, these drivers have the potential to promote the development of Web Services.

The ever-increasing market share is the biggest driver outside the firewall. Currently, Web can expand business to customers all over the world. By placing promotional links on other websites, you can access related websites of the enterprise. However, this technology allows customers to jump between websites, making them feel that many things are similar, but they will lose interest and no longer have any purchase behavior. Therefore, commercial websites can solve this problem by adding more content. But more does not mean better. In this case, the image of the company's core products is often diluted.

The greatest promise of Web Services is the ability to provide "one-stop shop" services. That is to say, any merchant can put others' Web Services on its own website and provide access to relevant content, in this way, users can find related product information without leaving their website. For example, an independent book dealer integrates Amazon's Web services so that users can access all the inventory book details of Amazon, in this way, users do not need to be sent to the Amazon website for a specific title. Generally, such titles are visible on the website of the book dealer, but transparent to users. In this way, the interests of the reseller, Amazon's retail share can be protected and improved, and users' experience in using web services will also be improved. The ability to provide transparent services to end users can improve users' shopping experience, and at a lower cost, some smaller websites can provide more services for users, in addition, it also makes some industry elders willing to provide services to small companies at competitive prices.

Carefully consider basic elements

At present, some companies have returned to the operating method of Element support and distributed the operation that has not promoted the bottom line of the company much, they are seeking to package some non-core business functions to third-party companies that are doing better, faster, and cheaper. It is true that the systems of many companies are closely linked to the core business processing, and they can be separated only by a large split of the business. However, other operations, such as external interfaces, are especially suitable for outsourcing. Many companies focus on low-risk business areas (such as customer call centers) and some loose functional services, hoping to save tens of billions of dollars through outsourcing. It is precisely because these companies have adopted cost reduction measures and adjusted the system's external roles that they can focus on developing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, it also provides several application software series. Web services can push forward such restructuring.

Prediction of the future of web services (to be continued)

SAP's mysap. com e-commerce platform is the most notable example. Mysap. com is a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) that uses enterprise-level Web Services. This platform makes full use of SAP Business Processing Solutions in Web Services, and allows the gateway to expand some business processing and services beyond the business boundaries. Opening a previously closed system not only simplifies some internal problems involving system integrity, but also enhances external collaboration, so that relevant organizations can uninstall some non-core business functions, these non-core business functions are mainly concentrated in some specific business areas, such as order fulfillment and inventory control.

This model provides basic templates for virtual companies. You will find that each business function is like a hugeArticleSmall paragraphs in the quotation structure. They are supported by loosely connected business objects and can adapt to the rapid changes of supplier relations, product/market systems, and quotation structures. In an open market, virtual companies can purchase functional modules without considering any access boundaries and high-cost barriers.

For companies that want to lock their targets in specific business areas, this platform also provides them with a new business model. These new services may be the only provider of a service or act as a broker. Therefore, within the scope of business transactions, Web Services will rely on the business processing management (BPM) tool, which can coordinate the processing process and organize the running of Web Services. Since coordination and organization are inseparable for most enterprise application integration (EAI) middleware, the sellers of EAI middleware extend the scope of their products to accept Web Services, it became a matter of course. However, as a result, the integration of reliable BPM tools, reliable web service standards and architectures poses challenges to the necessity of uninstalling non-core business functions.

Provide business processing integration solutions

With the advent of SOA, many middleware vendors regard Web Services as part of their products. Some companies (such as Vitria) use web services as system integration solutions to reduce the complexity of internal application integration, this also expands services to partners and industries outside of the business (see resources ).

These processing processes are presented in the form of web services, eliminating intensive labor and efficient use of private interfaces. In addition, to meet the ever-changing needs of the market, partners, and other applications, companies are bound to rapidly and concisely change their business processing processes for timely follow-up, web Services provide the foundation of BPM.

It is also important to note that, even if several layers of coordination, cooperation, and workflow standards are adopted in the future, in the big blueprint of distributed services, web services are only a small part. However, it is worth looking forward to the fact that sellers of today's middleware and application development tools will certainly expand web services to make them more functional and simple, in this way, the business processing process can be seamlessly integrated into the application functions, which is truly cross-platform, cross-language, and cross-device.

Prediction of the future of web services (to be continued)
Some integrated development environments such as Microsoft's Visual Studio. NET can already provide core architectures that can be seamlessly integrated to coordinate, create, or consume Web Services. Other integrated development environments such as IBM WebSphere are also expanding their J2EE development environment to integrate Web services into an easy-to-use development platform. It is expected that the. Net camp and the J2EE camp will upgrade their respective web service products in the future and strive to further accept bpm. In the near future, people may find that binding, dynamically running Web Services, suspending, or adjusting the processing process through an integrated development environment, this allows external web services to be used in a very wide range of fields. As many business relationships are conventional, related service level agreements (SLAs), related confidentiality and security agreements, and available suppliers are required, these requirements are essential for any business to provide and consume Web Services.

With the increasing number of Web Services released in the business, the entire industry will be attracted to the broker business model. Many brokers provide a number of optional services, ensure that these services are around the clock, and help monitor and evaluate related web services. These brokers will also be responsible for verifying the effectiveness of service providers and providing "one-stop stores" based on Web Services. They will also be aligned with some industry rules, and will become one of the future standards makers. In this way, for specific suppliers in the industry, the consolidation of their position will keep pace with the times, and thus cultivate the growing application fields of virtual companies.

Centralized web services

For centralized real-time services, Web Services greatly extend their availability in a cross-platform or cross-device manner. In addition to displaying related functions, Web services can also carry self-described information, allowing any device to consume or reassign a service.

Over the years, organizations have tried to centralize their individual services. In this way, you need to view the information of an organization in real time and make accurate business decisions based on the information. These advantages are essential for future business planning. For different systems throughout the Organization, the Central Library of web services can place real-time Views in it, reducing the demand for data warehouses, it can also be compatible with underlying middleware that supports bpm.

Real-time service integration processing triggered by the emergence of web services should have a robust conversion product that standardizes responses from multiple systems, and can send specific data back to request the service in real time in the correct format. This conversion product can also be used to develop BPM tools to improve the completeness, timeliness, and integration of the web service center database. The datastage product of ascentia software company combines BPM tools from companies such as Vitria, webmethods, IBM, and Microsoft to provide a solid foundation for the integration center database, it also plays a crucial role in the future development of Web Services. (See resources)

Prediction of the future of web services (to be continued)

Using Web Services to integrate processing processes is a complex task. You can select related tools for graphical modeling of business processing processes, and generate necessary transparentCodeCommunicate with Web services according to the rules embedded in the model. At present, the entire industry is shifting to the XML language, which is one of several business processing languages and part of the Web Service Stack. Together with the Web service process language (WSFL), it is submitted by IBM. To maintain market competitiveness, sellers of BPM tools may need to accept a standard business processing language, so that their products can be modified at the business service level. In addition, we can also select the best BTM tool for some business processes to meet the needs of specific environments.

Web services outside the firewall are currently facing great opportunities for the great strides forward. This kind of leap is triggered by the new integrated development environment combined with Web service brokers, and provides a strong guarantee and necessary relationships for promoting the development of truly shared services across business boundaries.

If you want to start now, you should use the web service integrated development environment of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, sun, and Bea to combine the conversion product and BPM tool, to construct a scalable basic architecture. Of course, it still takes a few days to put the Web Service Stack above the workflow and coordination standards. In order to make the web services outside the firewall become the holy grail of SOA, you still need powerful BPM products for a long time.

About the author

Mr. Robert Wegener is the director of Web Service solutions at the IT company, an IT professional service provider. Mr. Robert Wegener has over 20 years of experience in information and business engineering, such as operations, customer services, transportation, finance, product development, telecommunications and information systems. His email: dotnet@fawcette.com.

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