Simple services
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- Spotlight on e-partnerships, March 2002
How will web services standards enable organisations to build interfaces to their key business applications?
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In this area, WebMethods' Weller says she sees “as many problems doing internal integration as external”. Different departments define data and process models in different ways. “[Even] getting an agreement about a customer or order can be frustrating,” she says. Although standards for XML schema, common documents and message content such as Electronic Business XML (ebXML), Commerce XML (cXML) and Universal Business Language (UBL) are available, few companies are using them , and converting their existing data to use these standard definitions would be expensive.
These gaps are where EAI vendors see a role for themselves. Their integration brokers - the hubs that connect the integration applications - will provide the security, authentication, transaction management and data transformation currently missing from the web services standards.
As web services standards appear over the next few years to plug some of these gaps, the vendors will adapt their systems to take advantage of them, cutting costs for the customer by removing the need for extra solutions. Linking to legacy systems and data transformation, however, will remain EAI's killer app. “Eighty per cent of process management resides in the data layer,” says Tibco's Shivram. “And companies aren't going to spend years trying to create the perfect data model.”
Integrating applications will become considerably easier using web services. Although it will take time before all the flaws are fixed, enough of the standards work for enterprises to get reasonable returns on investment from their projects.
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