The Value Proposition of Web Services

It was mentioned in the beginning of Chapter 2, "J2EE Software Development Methodologies," that the computing industry recognizes very clearly the failure rate of application development efforts, which is currently running at approximately 70%. Because every IT project has its own nuances of challenges, technology itself is not the only factor for such a dismal failure rate. However, the consequences of adopting a specific technology can very easily contribute to the success or failure of an IT project, even if it is deferred to another point-in-time.

To avoid being a contributor to this statistic, organizations are beginning to think differently and ask themselves what nirvana would look like for a business solution from an enterprise standpoint. This is a major shift from the traditional deliver the application by just meeting the requirements paradigm. Organizations recognize that today's business solutions are susceptible to becoming legacy in the near future if they do not consider:

• The longevity or sustained growth of the business solution.

• The participation of the business solution in an enterprise Time-to-Share model, where its business process and associated domains of data, information, and knowledge may need to be leverageable (shared and accessible) to the organization, not today, but sometime in the life of the business solution.

It is extremely rare to see computing heavyweights such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun, BEA, Oracle, HP, and others agree on anything, yet they all concur Web services will be the native language of the next generation of Internet-based applications.

Web services hold a promise of simplifying integration across many aspects of the enterprise by providing:

• Interoperability among distributed business systems that span diverse hardware and software platforms.

• Accessibility of applications through firewalls using ubiquitous Web protocols (HTTP/HTTPS).

• A cross-platform, cross-language data model (XML) that enables interaction between heterogeneous distributed applications.

Based upon the above attributes, Web services can provide the following business value propositions to organizations:

• The acceptance of XML as the standard for exposing Web services, as opposed to platform-specific APIs, will reduce the costs and skills required to integrate both components within a system and across systems.

• Web services will enable easier B2C and B2B automation, and hence, the capability to build and sustain relationships between business partners and customers.

• Improve efficiencies through delivering better services, cheaper and faster.

• Greater enterprise agility by providing a network-centric approach to the business services within an organization.

• Provide an enhanced spectrum of revenue streams through interactions with untapped legacy business value chains.

• A long- term reduction in technical training expenses by the adoption of a corporate-wide strategy for enabling Web services through standard technologies and supporting platforms.

• A cost-effective and efficient approach to integration of systems, by the insulation of the EAI marketplace .

• Provide the foundation services for a portal framework that needs to encompass content, business systems, and internal or external (non-)syndicated services.

Because the Web services technology is very new, in order for organizations to participate in the Web services landscape, an investment is required in the adoption of the Web services “ related technologies and required skills.

The Web services technology is under evolution, similar to that of J2EE. For this reason, it is imperative organizations first prove the fundamental principles of Web services and upon success provide standards for designing, developing, and deploying Web services. Without proven standards, user organizations run the risk of misapplying this technology and incurring extra cost in both development and execution of software systems.