Rivalry bogs down Web services

With the software industry betting on Web services standards as the basis for many software systems, customers can expect a continuation of the high-stakes politics and battles among computing providers, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at research firm ZapThink.
“There’s going to be a lot more of this (conflict) as problems get more complex,” Schmelzer said. “As specifications take on more complicated issues like security, business process (automation) and service levels, they become competitive differentiation for products.”

Read more at: CNet

OASIS Forms Committee to Promote BPEL

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm, said: “The submission of BPEL to OASIS is a great step for BPEL as well as Web Services in general. BPEL is a key specification aimed at providing a mechanism by which Web Services can be orchestrated into business processes, which can then be exchanged and choreographed with external processes. Business process is a critical aspect of adoption of Web Services and especially Service-Oriented Architectures since business processes are how companies define their business requirements that must then be implemented with Web Services. Without process, all you have is a jumble of Web Services. Specifications like BPEL bring order to the chaos by specifying a logical flow by which Web Services can be orchestrated to meet defined business requirements.”

Read more at: eWeek

Service-Oriented Process

Business processes have always been an important, if understated, asset of enterprises. The nature and methods by which a company runs its business changes on a daily basis at various different levels in the company — from high-level strategic changes to lower-level implementation details. As a result of these changes, enterprises constantly struggle to make their businesses more responsive to business changes by connecting their business requirements to their IT and human capabilities.

However, automating business processes has historically been a difficult-to-achieve goal for most enterprises due to the flexibility of their IT infrastructure. Fortunately, businesses have a solution in Service-Oriented Process: a separate abstraction layer for business process definition and execution that leverages the capabilities of Service-oriented Architectures. Service-Oriented Process provides businesses an approach to tying business requirements to the Service model represented in the SOA metamodel, thereby providing a flexible approach towards implementing architectures that promote business agility.

Groups spar over Web standards

“Most vendors see Web services as a land-grab opportunity and are seeking to stake claims on territory,” says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink. “Customers are far from implementing many of these immature specifications so we have to interpret this land-grab standards mentality as a way for vendors to position their companies and their products as the platforms of choice for implementing this new breed of application.”

Read more at: NetworkWorld

IBM, Microsoft team on reliability spec for Web services

“Microsoft and IBM are concerned with the fact that the other proposed reliability spec focuses too much on reliability between two endpoints on a point-to-point communications path. They feel that is too brittle and confining,” says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink.

Read more at: NetworkWorld

Web Services Standards: Maturing or Fracturing?

You may have noticed, as has Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst for Web services and XML analysis firm ZapThink, that “they’re entirely different groups with no overlap.” But fear not for standards wars, because Bloomberg thinks that while corporate politics are, as always, playing a role, the real reason that two different groups of companies produced these standards prototypes is that the Web services software vendors are splitting up the work among them.

Bloomberg said, “IBM, for example, was working on reliability, but they’re happy for Sun to do the heavy lifting. And as for the new WS-Security initiative, pretty much all the WS vendors are supporting it.” Indeed, he explained, “the idea behind both group’s organization is that for the sake of efficiency, it’s easier for small groups of companies to hammer a standard out and then let the WS community review and comment on it. Then, after a review period, both will probably be released as draft standards.”

Read more at: SD Times

Web Services Standards Get Messier

Is there something missing here? On the security side, we have all these major players, except Oracle and Sun, and on the reliability front, we’ve got a lot of heavyweights, except Microsoft and IBM. Now, as I report in “Web Services Standards: Maturing or Fracturing?” (page 22), some analysts, like Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink, think that it will all work out in the end. More than that, Bloomberg seems to believe that the companies divided up the work so that the overall standardization of Web services happens sooner rather than later.

Read more at: SD Times

WS-Reliability Spec in OASIS’ Hands

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, Cambridge, Mass., said, “Developers and IT organizations won’t implement any important Web services without being able to guarantee that they will be executed in a guaranteed manner.”

Read more at: eWeek

Group adds backbone to Web services

Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink, said WS-Reliability tackles one of the long-standing hurdles to Web services adoption, which also include security, management and transactions.

“The big problem with the way people are implementing Web services today is that they are using pretty brittle protocols like HTTP (hypertext transport protocol). It’s OK for your browser, but no one in their right mind is going to implement a travel reservation booking system with that,” said Schmelzer. “The application had better succeed or reliably fail. It shouldn’t be that the server didn’t respond.”

Read more at: ZDNet

Group Tackles Web Services Reliability

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, Cambridge, Mass., said reliability is the third critical roadblock to Web services adoption after security and management. The “WS-Reliability specification is an obvious no-brainer,” he said. This is “because developers and IT organizations won’t implement any important Web services without being able to guarantee that they will be executed in a guaranteed manner.”

Yet, major players in the Web services world, namely IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp., have yet to weigh in on WS-Reliability, and ZapThink analysts said it would be difficult to “guarantee” reliability without those companies onboard.

Read more at: eWeek