Open Standards-The Only Option - Software Development Times On The Web

Open Standards-The Only Option
By Scott Hebner

May 1, 2001 — Remember Al Gore once joked to David Letterman, "I invented the Internet, and I can take it away"? While proprietary software systems may not be quite so severe in their threatened effect, they can hinder the growth of the Internet. Fortunately, open standards allow people to integrate business processes from all over the world, build best-of-breed systems and communicate with confidence with users of other systems, to the degree that they do not even have to think about it.

Those who support the open-standards philosophy believe it is best to cooperate on technical standards and compete on implementation. It is a simple yet profound formula that has worked spectacularly well for numerous other industries throughout the industrialized age, including railroads, telecommunications, consumer electronics and utilities such as gas, electricity and water. Unfortunately, not all technology companies believe that open standards are the way to go with Internet technologies.

The Internet, almost by definition, is an integrated collection of open standards, and its benefits should be as accessible as possible. It is crucial that it not become a battleground for competing proprietary standards.

Take Web services. They represent the confluence of technology and adherence to open standards that will enable business success.

Web services are self-describing, self-contained, modular applications that can be mixed and matched with other Web services to create innovative processes and value chains. They can be accessed in asynchronous and synchronous modes (online and offline), through any client device (PCs, cell phones, handheld computers and so on). Web services can communicate with each other and are knowledgeable about their functions and roles in an application work flow, including inputs they require, outputs and their presentation format.

Using Web services, firms will be able to routinely publish services, access them and invoke them without being aware of who the service requester is or who the provider is beforehand. This will allow businesses to focus on their core competencies and outsource all other essential, noncore activities at runtime. Business structures will be altered, and traditional models of creating and sustaining competitive advantages will be redefined. Users who need innovative solutions to enhance their competitive edge will be able to do so without having to worry about integration with existing systems and support for their business processes.

Increasing use of object-oriented programming languages, such as Java, has enabled the encapsulation of software applications into objects that contain greater functionality and support for business processes, and can be deployed across a network. Numbers of devices that are connected to the Internet are growing exponentially, and computational standards such as Linux, WAP and TCP/IP are being incorporated into these devices.

In addition, broadband and universal connectivity to the Internet are becoming commonplace.

Services such Gnutella and Napster illuminate the possibilities of intelligent peer-to-peer networks that can facilitate greater collaborative computing scope. Use of open standards facilitates these networks that can create truly "end-to-end" connectivity.

The open standards world of HTML, Java and XML will now expand to integrate new open standards for Web services, including SOAP for communications, WSDL for describing the programmable interfaces, and UBR/UDDI as the repository for Web services. Users have become familiar with HTTP for Internet communications, HTML for navigating Internet applications, and URL/DNS for identifying Web sites and resolving their locations. Now applications will have a similar set of open standards, and the effect will be the acceleration of the e-business revolution. Combined, these trends create the convergence required for exploiting the Internet as a computing platform on which smarter software applications can enable e-business at electronic speeds.

The simple reality is that the full potential of the Internet will not be realized without agreement on technology standards. This becomes especially important as newer and easier ways to access the Net become available, like mobile Web-enabled phones and the billions of other handheld devices that will connect to the Net in the next few years. The incredible diversity of systems and standards that currently exist can make such connection difficult.

With Web services, each individual or business does not have to recreate the wheel, hand coding stock quotations, airline reservations and news streams. Using the Web as an extension of function, developers can discover and incorporate prewritten Web services with their existing applications to create and enhance business and customer e-business relationships.

Web services will have a wide-ranging impact on various businesses, their business models and the nature of their interaction with employees, customers, partners, suppliers and regulators.

To evolve into the next era of e-business, the Internet's infrastructure needs to be as open, flexible and adaptable as our modern-day telephone network. The way to do this is to adopt common technology standards for the Internet, starting with the software that provides intelligence for running complex systems.

Companies should not have to worry about whether their systems will work with one another or link to partners and suppliers. Software should provide the glue that makes everything work together. The integrating software-middleware-needs to run on all platforms, regardless of vendor, architecture and operating system, so that they are all connected. When that happens, the Internet will become a common ground for everyone who wants to use it. The Internet belongs to everyone, and its basic architecture should reflect this public purpose.

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