Global XML Web Services Architecture

Introduction

Over the past five years, Microsoft has worked with other computing industry leaders to create and standardize a set of specifications for a new model of distributed computing called XML Web services. Already there are hundreds of customers deploying and running XML Web services and thousands more in the process of development. XML Web services standards, which include SOAP, XML, and WSDL, provide a high level of interoperability across platforms, programming languages and applications, enabling customers to solve integration problems easily.

But as XML Web services solutions become more global in reach and capacity – and therefore more sophisticated – it becomes increasingly important to provide additional capabilities to ensure global availability, reliability and security. Recognizing the need for standardizing these additional capabilities, Microsoft has released a new set of specifications that are the beginning of the Global XML Web Services Architecture. The aim of this architecture is to provide additional capabilities to baseline XML Web services specifications. The Global XML Web Services Architecture specifications are built on current XML Web services standards. Microsoft intends to work with key industry partners and standards bodies on these and other specifications important to XML Web services.

This paper outlines the state of XML Web services today. It demonstrates the need for a set of additional capabilities as companies deploy XML Web services to support increasingly sophisticated business processes. Finally, it addresses how Microsoft is beginning to address the need for additional capabilities with the Global XML Web Services Architecture and its supporting specifications.

XML Web Services Today

Companies are implementing XML Web services to integrate applications within the enterprise and to extend the reach of their businesses to partners and customers. This creates business efficiencies and exposes companies to new sources of revenue. Consider what the following companies are doing with XML Web services today:

Department Store Chain – Enterprise Application Integration

Background: The chain discovered that different credit approval applications had been developed in various parts of the company.

Solution: The chain exposed one credit approval application as an XML Web service. They linked this, in turn, to their point-of-sale, warehouse, and financial applications.

Business Benefits: The chain was able to expose the new credit approval application and use it with the three distinct applications operating around the company. As a result:

· Credit approvals became more consistent

· Maintenance costs decreased

· Billing back to departments became more efficient

Car Rental Company – Interoperability with Key Partner

Background: A major airline approached the car rental company about putting a link to the car reservation system on the airline’s Web site. Linking the two proprietary reservation systems presented an extreme challenge.

Solution: The car rental company created a translation engine for sending data between the two systems.

Business Benefits:

· Car rental company developed another large sales channel

· Solution got to market quickly

Some early-adopter companies are implementing next-generation XML Web services solutions that support more sophisticated business processes. The next snapshot is representative of such a service.

Insurance Company – Interoperability across Several Companies

Background: A large insurer needed to generate quotes for dental coverage and make them available on the intranet of one of their large corporate customers. The insurer had already used XML Web services to integrate its rating and quotes engine. But it had outsourced the maintenance of the dental providers’ directory and the credit rating service. These outsourced services were two vital elements for the generation of dental quotes and made the problem of their availability to clients non-trivial.

Solution: The insurance company, credit rating service, and dental provider orchestrated these applications to generate a quote that was requested by the customer on a corporate intranet.

Business Benefits: The insurance company considered this a transformational competitive advantage for the following reasons:

· It generated quotes in half the time of its competitors and provided them via a corporate intranet to one of its major customers.

· It automated existing business relationships at the level of multiple, interoperating applications. As a result, outsourcing became much more valuable, cutting the cost of quote generation by one third.

· It increased profitability in a thin-margin business.

· It provided a more seamless relationship with one of its biggest customers.

Because of application re-use and shortened time-to-market, companies can realize significant cost savings from taking an XML Web services approach to a solution. Through the integration of backend applications and key partner applications, companies are able to realize new efficiencies in the way they do business. Finally, by extending core functionality to partners, businesses are able to create new sales channels.

Trend toward Greater Sophistication

As with the adoption of any technology, XML Web services solutions are being developed to support increasingly sophisticated business processes. Apparent in the three examples above are three tiers of XML Web services development.

Tier 1 -- Enterprise Application Integration

More often than not, this is the beginning point for most companies. As in the first case study, companies initially use XML Web services to integrate internal applications. XML Web services allow them to expose legacy applications to business applications in heterogeneous environments without having to rewrite significant amounts of code.

Tier 2 – Interoperability with Key Partners

The next step for most companies is to integrate one or two key partners outside the company. Companies use XML Web services because they allow for interoperability between applications across the public Internet. Because of the lack of broadly-adopted specifications, companies must agree upon the technologies they will use to develop these interoperating XML Web services.

Tier 3 – Interoperability across Multiple Companies

Companies want to extend their computing out to more partners and customers to build business ecosystems like the one illustrated below.