E-Business
Issue No. 6 - July/September 2002
Web Services No Gimmick, says CIBM
The South Australian Centre for Innovation, Business and Manufacturing (CIBM) and international research company Gartner Group are collaborating to demonstrate how South Australian companies and government agencies can find new opportunities from the emerging field of web services.
The term “web services” refers to a set of standards that allow applications to communicate across the Internet. They herald a future where businesses can access applications from credit checking to document translation over the web almost as easily as plugging a toaster into a wall socket and getting a consistent electricity supply.
For the first time in computing history, the main software vendors have agreed on a range of standards to allow this program-to-program communication across the Internet to take place.
Gartner Research Director Greta James says web services stem in part from the significant rethink that followed the collapse of the dotcom boom in early to mid 2000.
“Microsoft, IBM, HP and SUN have agreed that open standards are needed for progress and, to some degree, on what the standards will look like,” Greta says.
“With all the major vendors supporting web services, there will be no need to worry about what programming ‘religion’‚ is used at either end, whether it’s .Net or Java.
“Enterprises will be able to package their software as services in much the same way as Lego building blocks. These blocks will then be used much more easily by business partners resulting in more flexible and intimate business relationships.
“Legacy systems will be a major source of web services as they are ‘wrapped’‚ to allow internal and external access.”
Web services architecture will represent the next generation of platform middleware, and according to Gartner Group research, by 2003 this architecture will be supported by more than 80 percent ...
