XML Web Services – To Develop or Not - Cognizant

XML Web Services – To Develop Or Not To Develop?IntroductionWebServices are a stack of emerging standards that describe service-oriented applicationarchitecture. They are loosely coupled, reusable software components that are distributed andprogrammatically accessible over standard Internet protocols. It may appear as a new way ofexposing the capabilities of existing applications through XML and SOAP. But behind thissimplicity we foresee a major change in the software industry and business in general. Here wewill explain the reasons why such a simple initiative will revolutionize the business and mostprobably revitalize the whole e-business.New Business models on the InternetSoftware as a ServiceSoftware existed as applications that can be installed and used wherever required. Thanks toXML Web Services, a new business model, which delivers software as a service, is nowemerging. Functionalities will be delivered as a set of Web Services by the organizations.Organizations can become more focused in their core business, getting software services frombusinesses that operate in complimentary areas. Many of these software services can be wiredtogether to form a highly powered solution. The software service provider can also write manyservices that may be integrated by different application providers. It thus becomes much simplerand easy to host applications on the web and reap revenues on a usage basis. Web Services willbe the cornerstone of the software reuse model on similar lines as objects and components.Software service aggregatorsWhen many business and technical functionalities are available as Web Services, it also willgenerate a new set of aggregators who will provide various Web Services under one umbrella.The advantages provided to the end user will be a single identity across multiple services andsimple payment options (Instead of payment to many different Web Services). Also, from a WebServices provider perspective this is a good option, since it is easier to host the application andtake the revenue from the aggregator.Device enabled solutionsThere is a boom in the devices sector where a huge amount of business potential waits to betapped. Devices can be programmed to handle situations in the absence of individuals. Forinstance, consider the scenario where a refrigerator detects the amount of milk available andonce that is below the threshold, it automatically orders milk from the market. As more and moredevices hit the market, it becomes increasingly necessary for the business to support thosedevices. The new XML Web Services provide a generic infrastructure in which it can beconsumed by any device. This paves way for a new kind of business model Business to Device(B2D).We foresee a bloom of special range of devices called “smart devices” with the advent of WebServices. A classic scenario where a smart device could be employed is depicted below. Thesmart refrigerator detects the amount of milk in the refrigerator and once the level goes below aset threshold value it searches the web for the service providers who supply milk; it identifies theCognizant Technology Solutions Page 1 of 7

XML Web Services – To Develop or Not to Developbest provider and orders for a supply of milk. The aggregate service provider then validates thecredit card information of the owner of the refrigerator; it then identifies the nearest milk vendorand requests him to deliver milk. The milk is delivered and the customer gets billed for theservice.Fig 1. Business to Device ModelBusiness IntegrationIn today’s world of Internet, it is mandatory for any business to interact with its business partnerseffectively. There are currently many tools available in the market, which will automate theprocess of business integration. These tools provide out-of-box business integration features,which can be leveraged by the applications. But these integrations were all one to one, painfullycreated for each business interaction, since the interaction demanded the data exchange indifferent ways and formats. With the advent of XML Web Services, the business integration logicbecomes much easier. Both the sides of the business open up their services as generic WebServices, allowing a many to many interaction without any changes to the application. WebService can serve typically all kinds of clients residing on any device, any platform. Thereforeintegration with heterogeneous systems becomes a simple task.

XML Web Services – To Develop or Not to DevelopFig 2. Existing B2B ModelThe above picture shows how businesses communicate with other businesses in the world. Theywere restricted with tightly coupled mechanisms like hardwiring. Each business had to know thedata-formatting standard of the other business with which it needed to communicate. There was aneed for an easier way of business integration. This is a classic case of one to one businessintegration.Fig 3. New B2B ModelThe above picture depicts how the advent of Web Services has made business integration easierand simpler. Businesses can now expose their functionality as Web Service interfaces that acceptand return data as XML, an Internet standard. Other businesses, irrespective of their platforms,can now use these Web Services.

XML Web Services – To Develop or Not to DevelopOpportunities for DevelopmentThe birth of XML Web Services will create tremendous development opportunities for variousbusinesses.Providing information as a serviceCurrently, all the information is delivered as a static content. It is difficult for the applications toquery against this information. XML Web Service makes a lot of sense when applications need toquery against a centralized information store or integrate different such information nuggets. Thecurrent static presentation model limits the end usage of the information to be just a document.Web Services liberate this information and allow reusing of this beyond the boundary of thebrowser. This gives rise to scope for more information aggregations and more softwaredevelopment.Reusing the functionalityThere are some businesses that provide the functionality for performing a specific action, sayauthentication, credit-card validation etc. Such functionalities can be potential Web Services,which can be plugged into many applications.Business Process IntegrationIf an enterprise wants to integrate its businesses processes with its partners, each step of thebusiness process that goes across an enterprise boundary is a potential Web Service or WebService operation.Building block service providerBuilding-block service providers provide infrastructure services ("plumbing") for other Webapplications and Web Service developers, for example an identity service or a billing service.Aggregating ServicesXML Web Services can provide the right combination of information to the applications byaggregating several services, thereby saving the clients the work of combining the existingservices themselves.

XML Web Services – To Develop or Not to DevelopWeb Services: Can it replace any of the businessmodels on the Internet?XML Web Services by its inherent nature to interoperate with different devices, platforms etc.,initiates the evolution of new business models and provides value additions to the existingmodels.In a B2C scenario currently applications are mostly standalone. All the interactions like identity,payment etc. is one to one. When the user moves to a different website, all these informationneeds to be given all over again. In other words, every interaction is individual and the web, as awhole does not have a collective knowledge on the user identity nor preferences nor uniformhandling of payment. XML Web Services will open a new market for aggregate services in which,many participating Web Services will share the same identity, preferences and payment. This willensure that the current individual interaction business models on the Internet will soon betransformed into paid services under the umbrella of some aggregators. Existing Internetapplications depend on online advertising and online purchase as the only source of revenue.Dot-Com failures can be attributed mainly to the fact that they did not have a clear revenuemodel. Web Service provides a distinct revenue model by which services can be charged basedon usage or on a subscription basis.Today’s B2B application integration is done by hard-wiring, messaging or by using third partybusiness integration tools all of which are basically one to one interaction between businesses.Web Services provide a simple mechanism by which business processes can interact in a manyto many relationship. There are many thorny issues to be addressed like industry standardizationof XML, transaction, security etc. But these issues will eventually be addressed opening up amuch more global producer/consumer business model.The reason for the ASP (application service providers) model not being so popular is that itdemands the users to use the application in its entirety. It becomes increasingly difficult for theapplication to use a limited set of features that an ASP provides. . Another reason for the failureof the ASP model is the same issue sited for all the existing Internets - individual interactions andnot being able to integrate the services. Again this model of monolithic applications will be underpressure to divide the services and provide each of these individual smaller functionalities asWeb Services.Web Services throw open definite opportunities to modify the old business models and to createnew ones.

XML Web Services – To Develop or Not to DevelopHow XML Web Services solve current e-commerceproblems?E-Commerce was perceived to become the backbone of all businesses. All businesses startedmoving towards e-commerce rapidly but owing to the limitations in the technologies as well as therevenue models used by them, many of them failed. Web Services will prove to be the lifeline formany of these e-commerce applications. The following section explains the problems related tocurrent e-commerce applications.Lack of ReuseMost of the sites were essentially developing the same functionalities like payment processing,user profile etc. Instead of this model if we reuse the existing functionalities of the other serviceproviders using Web Services, each one can focus on their core area and get the revenue.Lack of clear revenue modelThough the failure of many of the websites can be attributed to lack of information, many othersfailed in spite of providing extremely useful information. The reason was that they were not in aposition to ask money for these services and depended entirely on revenues from advertisement.The precious intellectual capital was given away for few advertisement clicks. But in a paid WebServices model if their information is useful, then some other service is going to use it and pay forit.Enterprise business integrationAn E-Commerce application either a B2C or B2B, needs to integrate with other business forrunning the business effectively. For example a B2C application needs to integrate with paymentsystem and a B2B application needs to integrate with its business partners. Web Services makesthis integration process simpler by making it as a part of the application.Development Time and CostEvery business had to invest huge sums for developing an e-commerce site. The developmenttime was also too long. But all that was being done was developing the same functionality overand over again-the same issue of lack of reuse. With the advent of Web Services e-commercesites can be developed easily by just plugging in the required Web Services.Reduction in effective user time on the siteThis is another aspect of lack of reuse. Each e-commerce site had a separate sign in for itscustomers. They had to collect the information about the customers like their address, credit cardnumber etc. This frustrated the user because of the repeated entry of the same data and alsoremembering the logins for each site. By using single-sign-on Web Services provided by thirdparties, these drawbacks can be overcome and also the security issues can be solved, to someextent.

XML Web Services – To Develop or Not to DevelopCo-branding issuesIt was important for businesses to provide value additions to their application by co-branding withother businesses. But this required a lot of understanding between the two businesses and alsowas very inflexible to changes. Web Services have made co branding an easy process. Anotherissue with co- branding was the revenue model used. It was a tedious process to bill the requestscoming from the co- branded site. Web Service metering features makes the usage accountingvery easy.VisibilityIt was difficult for businesses to get a visibility on the Internet so that other businesses could usetheir services. When a business wanted to use a service for some functionality, it had to do anextensive search to find a suitable provider. But with emerging business directory concepts, anybusiness can easily find a provider of services for its requirements.ConclusionAs we explained, a web service though technically very simple affects both technology andbusiness in an unprecedented way. From a business perspective it exposes all the business asservices allowing complex aggregations and interactions very much like the real world businessopeningup new business models and improving the existing ones. From a software developmentperspective it is the next evolution of reuse - from objects to components to services. We foreseea major change and sure that the industry will accept it.