How Web Services Can Help a Business Open New Markets

Let's say that your company runs a worldwide auto parts distribution business. You have basic run-the-business applications (financial payment systems, sales, distribution, inventory, etc.) and may have implemented a business-to-business transaction system that links your inventory and shipping department to a transportation company that delivers your orders.

Using today's non-Web services model, your company as part of its core inventory and distribution system will likely have "hard-coded" information about your transporter's method of doing business, its terms and conditions, its shipping and delivery charges, its delivery schedules, and more into a database that helps integrate your core system with your external shipper.

Now, just suppose that your company wants to expand shipping parts to countries that its transporter does not cover. Now someone will have to contact new transporters, structure new business agreements, and send contracts out for competitive bid right?

Not with Web services. With Web services your core application can be instructed to find other applications that can provide services to the core application. In this case, a wealth of companies capable of delivering your products to prospective customers may exist in a Web services UDDI directory. Those transporters will have listed characteristics about their companies and how your company can do business with them. Payment and delivery terms will have been automated, and potentially even a parts tracking system may be active (courtesy of another Web services provider). The whole process of establishing a business relationship that allows transporters to distribute your products globally can thus be automated.

As a result of using Web services, the inability of your established transporter to deliver your products to your customers should no longer cause your business to be geographically restricted. By using Web services, applications are able to automatically find other, alternative transporters capable of delivering your products (even potentially at a lower cost) thus improving your company's geographic reach and potentially increasing its overall profitability.

In this scenario, Web services allowed your company to expand into new markets by automatically and dynamically finding other "service" programs to help your company expand its global reach.

By using Web services standards that enable applications to work cooperatively over the Internet and by paying careful attention to how work and information flows between "requesters" (humans or applications) and Web services providers (Web services applications and databases), this automotive parts company can integrate its software applications with those of its partners and suppliers and thus expand its market reach while improving overall efficiency in the supply chain (which, in turn, results in more profitable business operations). In short, using Web services to automate functions and streamline processes helped this automotive company open new markets for its products.

Not So Fast…

Now for a dose of reality. The aforementioned example is "theoretically possible." But in reality the UDDI registry needed to enable this auto parts company to find other distributors and to programmatically establish distributor relationships with its new business partners does not yet exist.

Public UDDI directories are just now being assembled led by companies like IBM, NTT, Microsoft, HP, and SAP that want to encourage the formation of large, public directories of Web services-based applications.

Meanwhile, small "private" UDDI directories are starting to sprout up. These directories are designed to service the needs of smaller communities of Web services users for instance, users who are trying to establish healthcare, insurance, or other "vertical market" specialized Web services environments, or even auto parts distributors as illustrated earlier. (The InterPro Global Partners example used later on in this book is also a good example of a specialized Web services community.)

Be aware that despite the absence of a rich industry directory of available Web services, Web services applications can still be written. Humans need to intervene to tell Web services applications where to look for the services that they require, however, rather than applications being able to automatically look up the location of cooperative applications in a UDDI directory. This is how most Web services applications are being written today.

Despite the lack of a generalized public-domain UDDI directory, this auto parts example is important because (1) it shows how Web services can ultimately work and (2) it sets the proper expectation for business managers about how mature the Web services standards really are.



Web Services Explained. Solutions and Applications for the Real World
Web Services Explained, Solutions and Applications for the Real World
ISBN: 0130479632
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 115
Authors: Joe Clabby

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