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A wish list for Web Services

Bob Sutor for ZDNet.com ZDNet US

Published: 15 Jan 2003 11:36 GMT

It's a new year, and we're thinking about how the last one has turned out and how this one's shaping up. In our personal lives, we make resolutions for the new year. I'd like to do something similar for the professional side of my life by making some educated wishes about where I'd like to see Web services heading in 2003.

Before looking ahead, let's take a brief look back. In the beginning, we used phones and faxes to exchange business information. The digital revolution changed all that as the Internet allowed us to exchange data easily with one another as well as across the enterprise. From there, enterprise resource planning helped us integrate as many business functions as possible to run the business efficiently and cost-effectively.

Web services was the logical next step in building an open technology platform that would enable different applications, systems and data to communicate transparently with one another. With Web services, enterprises can link their customers, employees, suppliers and partners, no matter what proprietary technologies each is running. Further, Web services software enables enterprises to bring their legacy IT systems up to speed without having to rip and replace them. It's evolution rather than revolution.

The road hasn't been without its bumps, but we've made good progress in IT integration through Web services. We entered 2002 with two major objectives in mind: to address interoperability issues throughout the industry, and to improve the security of Web-services systems.

The Web Services Initiative (WSI), begun last year with members from across the IT industry, has made huge strides toward improving interoperability by publishing specs that enable companies to coordinate their Web-services products. And in the area of security, we've gotten past the amorphous "I don't know what I need, but I know that more is better" approach. We're now identifying what the real needs are and where we must do more to make systems safe from internal and external intrusion.