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The advance of XML Web Services
Web Services is currently one of the hottest issues in the software industry. Regardless of the typical hype that inevitably seems to accompany the emergence of new technologies, there are good reasons for predicting a success of Web Services. In the world of Web Services, one software application can dynamically discover a number of others over the Internet, and by using their compound functionality new services can be created. This functionality gives Web Services the potential to repeat the success of the Internet. An important question is: will there be a role for telcos? For clarification it should be noted that the term Web Services does not include services like Web server provisioning, Internet access, or services like Napster. XML Web Services is an umbrella term. It defines methods which enable applications, pieces of software, to access the functionality of other remote software components over the Internet. This can be compared to the advent of Web browsing, which enabled people to view content, or in general, to use services that could be located anywhere on the Web. The concept of Web Services now extends the opportunity to access a remote service ‘of its own choice’ to software applications. Web Services for IT If you trust the analysts’ opinions, then the great future of Web Services has already begun in the IT domain. Consulting companies like Cap Gemini, Ernst & Young, or the Meta Group have published studies on Web Services, in which they forecast that the breakthrough of Web Services will soon happen. This forecast is based on industry surveys by consulting companies. The survey results showed that Web Services are high on the agenda, being pushed from CEO level in more than 50 percent of the cases. Marketing, sales and CRM are considered as the most promising application areas. Can telcos benefit from Web Services? Web Services have also a big potential for telcos. Two areas shall exemplify this. Across the world, network operators and service providers are looking for new content-based and application-based multi-media services as a way to boost revenues. Telcos will need to partner with content providers and application providers in order to deliver new services to users. These partnerships will lead to extended value chains, with a number of players involved. Web Services is an exciting technology that can be used to realise and automatise these interactions. The resulting reduction of costs of the service provision is one of the advantages that can be gained. This will enable service offerings that would have been impossible to make without Web Services, due to an otherwise unsellable high service price for the end-user. A second application area for Web Services is the integration of company internal systems. Due to the historical process of introducing components or systems in a company, they often adhere to different standards for their operating systems, communication protocols and other system components. At a telecoms network operator, these could be the switches, the network or service management systems, or billing components. A technology which has already been widely applied to achieve interoperability is the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). CORBA can arbitrate between applications on a number of operating systems and of several programming languages. CORBA, however, often fails when it is used between physically remote applications and in particular when firewalls have to be passed. This is where one of the strengths of Web Services comes in, for which large distances or firewalls are no problem. Conclusions There are surely more aspects in Web Services than mentioned above, which make them an exciting technology deserving a close interest from telcos. A number of Eurescom projects have already been working on the technical issues and business opportunities of XML Web Services: P1209 ‘XML Web Services’, P1242 ‘Web Services Orchestration’, and, just started, P1306 ‘BIZCOOL – Business to business interaction with Web Services and ebXML’. This cover theme includes two articles from the project leaders of P1209 and P1242 and an exclusive article on security mechanisms for Web Services. These contributions will shed some more light on the emerging field of XML Web Services and might help telcos in evaluating the business opportunities for them. Please send us your comments on this article. |
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