A Web-Services Checklist For I.T. Managers

The I.T. enterprise environment typically is equipped with a number of heterogeneous systems that integrate hardware and software based on different proprietary technologies. Enabling all these diverse elements to function together seamlessly is no small networking task. However, a new set of I.T. building blocks is beginning to do just that.

"Web-services standards and technologies allow us to describe and deploy applications or services on a network in a consistent way," said Bob Sutor, Director of WebSphere infrastructure software at, "so that they can be discovered and invoked in a secure and reliable manner."

In practice, however, the term "Web services" is defined by particular standards, which means that "it is important how those standards are used and that they are implemented in a particular way," he told NewsFactor.

For his part, Sutor remains unconcerned that the standards for Web services are still evolving.

"From the beginning, IBM has thought of Web services as an evolutionary technology," he observed. "Consistency and interoperability are what the technology is all about, and the standards are merely the means to this end."

The Flexibility of Loose Coupling

Business applications from different vendors often are linked within an individual company today; order entry might involve the use of CRM software from Siebel, for example, whereas order fulfillment might be performed by a back-end ERP application from SAP.

"Because each application is tightly coupled to the API, a change to either will likely break that application," said BEA Systems director of Web Services John Kiger. "This makes it very complex and difficult to change any application later on."

In contrast, Web-Services standards and technologies are expressly designed to enable the "loose coupling" of applications. Businesses are able to replace individual software components "without having to change the service interface that the Web application depends upon," Kiger told NewsFactor.

Another benefit of loose coupling is that neither end of a network has to know anything about the other beyond the Web-service description to be found there.

"Integration is based on a service contract," notes Kiger. "That is, whenever one application talks to another, it is utilizing a public description of the service being offered."

Asking the Right Questions

Before implementing Web Services on their networks, however, I.T. managers "will need to take a deep breath, then conduct an assessment" with respect to "the business-critical services and applications that they already have," said Sutor.

"Then they should ask themselves what two systems {they have] always wished they could connect together, but for reasons of cost or software incompatibility were prevented from doing so," he added.

This often becomes a priority when an I.T. manager is faced with integrating business segments in the aftermath of a merger or an acquisition, notes Sutor. "What applications do you want to keep running, and what types do you want to externalize to your business customers, partners and suppliers?"

The decision is also likely to involve relationships across divisions within the same company. For this reason, I.T. enterprise managers are advised to devote some time to thinking about the importance of reliability and quality of service in the performance of core I.T. tasks.

"Businesses are also generally trying to understand what to keep as core and what to outsource," Sutor said. "Most I.T. people have a list in their back pockets that consists of portions of their I.T. structure that they would like to outsource."

The No Man's Land Between Platforms

The current "froth surrounding the Web-services standards process" is not necessarily a bad thing, believes Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner.

"In avoiding specs by committee process, Microsoft and IBM have taken a page, in a sense, from their earlier Java game plan for avoiding too many cooks in the kitchen," he said. "What's going to be interesting is to see how the various approaches" now under consideration "will all eventually coalesce" into a complete specification set for defining Web services.

One good sign, notes Gardner, is that nobody currently is jumping up and down about the possibility of a splintered decision.

"Why this is the case is that we are really talking about interoperability as opposed to actually creating a stack," noted Gardner. "We are kind of in this no man's land between platforms, which means that the idea of doing it one way and only one way is not considered so important."

Market as Final Arbiter

Although a standards organization ,such as OASIS, eventually may play a role in resolving differences among the overlapping or competing technologies that presently are being considered, Kiger believes that the market ultimately will become the final arbiter.

"Designing from scratch in a committee, which is a very long and arduous process," is not always successful," he pointed out, whereas the "development of standards based on proven ideas and implementations" has proven to be a far more effective approach in the past."

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