Platform progress
- Article 1 of 1
- Flexible B2B, January 2002
How are B2B platform developers incorporating support for web services into their products?
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“Web services is like a lingua franca but is more of a 'protocol franca',” elaborates chief technical architect for GE Global eXchange Services, John Radko. “In the real world, we've agreed that to send someone a letter, we'll write things on pieces of paper, put them in envelopes and then stick stamps on the envelopes. So we can send anyone anything we can write down. But it doesn't mean we can read the letter if it's in another language. It's just the same on the web: just because we can download a web page, doesn't mean we can read it.”
Web services, argues Radko, does not establish standards for the data. Similarly, without signatures, the recipient of a letter might not be able to tell if it is from who it claims to be from and without the security of the envelope and the postal service, neither the sender nor the recipient would know if the letter had been read.
Overcome or circumvent
For any B2B platform or business process based on web services to succeed, it has to overcome or circumvent these problems.
As a result, uptake of web services-based B2B software has been patchy. John Watton, UK marketing manager of B2B platform developer Ariba, claims that although web services is important for the future of B2B collaboration, his company has encountered very few companies that are seriously considering using the technology for anything more than internal integration programmes. “We've got over 400 business customers. I could count on one hand the number asking for web services. It's a solution area still in relative infancy and demand isn't going to take off for a couple of years,” he says.
Cormac Watters, senior vice president at collaborative platform developer Intentia, concurs, saying that his company's customers have started using web service-enabled exchanges - but mostly behind the firewall and within their own companies, rather than with trading partners, so they do not have the problems of security that B2B would involve.
However, in the next few years, most industry watchers believe web services will have filled in the gaps in its capabilities and will be more than ready to meet the challenges of B2B collaboration.
“Web services-based electronic hubs are emerging as the central nervous system for collaborative commerce,” argues Charles Abrams, research director at analysis company Gartner. Starting in 2003, he predicts, the first real take up of web services for B2B will begin. In 2004, companies will be using B2B web services to work with their existing trading partners, while by 2005, directory-based web services will be helping companies to locate new trading partners.
And there is some evidence that early adopters are notching up significant success with web services projects. “The last four jobs we've had have all been Internet integrations, rather than internal. They were all for large organisations, and they all chose web services,” says Connell of WestGlobal.
These companies, he says, have demanded the ability to manage web services, the resources they access, and other business related processes - in short, they have insisted that WestGlobal provide them with web services choreography functions in what are reasonably sophisticated web services implementations.
Likewise, GXS' Radko says that his company and customers use standard SSL encryption, as used by secure web sites or even VPNs, to secure web services traffic - although they do require more work to configure than a pure web services solution would.
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