They can take much of the hard work out of developing and
integrating e-business systems, but finding truly open standards is
not as easy as it sounds. E-Business Review asked two experts to
explain
What standards can do for you
Standards have a crucial
role in ensuring that the vision of an interconnected world in
which information flows freely between organisations comes to
fruition. Their importance can be highlighted in terms of
interoperability, development and customer benefits. Standards are
necessary at an infrastructure level to define how networked
devices communicate, but also to define business processes. They
ensure that different implementations of technology will work
together in a predictable manner and provide the structure upon
which Web services can be built. Over the past couple of years the
importance of seamless interoperability has become clear to both
suppliers and users of IT. As organisations extend their influence
up and down the supply chain, and increase contact with customers
and stakeholders through customer relationship management and
similar implementations, standard-based interoperability of diverse
systems becomes ever more critical.
Secondly, as cost and speed to market become ever more important,
organisations need to streamline their development resources.
Standards help them do this in a number of ways - applications can
be referenced from standard documents rather than developed from
scratch. And development time and resources can be used more
efficiently by using standards to de-couple the development process
and allow parallel development of server and tools.
Let me explain: If the server represents information in an industry
standard format and stores it in standards-based repository then
the tools to access and manipulate this information can use
standard-based pathways to reach the data. Teams developing each
element can therefore concentrate on their tasks without
significant liaison or concerns over the integration of the
finished system.
Finally, customers benefit greatly from standards. Not only do they
give them flexibility in their choice of implementation, but the
ability to change scope and supplier as circumstances dictate.
Organisations need not fear supplier lock-in as they can be sure of
compatibility of successive implementations based on the
standard.
Publicly published standards are even more beneficial as they give
customers the option to build or extend their systems themselves
using in-house developed software conforming to the standard. There
is also the benefit of a wide-ranging community of users providing
support and experience to those adopting and working with the
standard for the first time.
Standards provide a clear and reliable structure that is critical
for the development of the next generation of technology solutions.
Oisin Hurley, IONA Technologies
www.iona.com
The 'Open Standards' Trick
Certain technology vendors
are creating 'open standards' with the sole aim of gaining critical
mass. Are we now just dealing with 'vendor' standards, which
attempt to lock organisations into proprietary standards in
perpetuity?
XML is a perfect example. Widely hailed as the universal language
for e-commerce, XML is meant to revolutionise the way in which data
is shared and distributed by defining interfaces between systems
that lack interoperability. However, there are now over 230 XML
derivatives. Most of these come from different industry sectors,
and some even within the same sector. How can XML be a truly open
standard? Making e-business collaboration sometimes impossible,
'open' standards are being introduced by certain major players to
lock customers into their software systems. Some vendors convey the
software as 'compulsory' and make sure that it cannot interoperate
with other competitive technologies. Instead of using a standard to
promote universality, suppliers with the greatest financial clout
hijack standards and develop applications to ensure that companies
can't benefit from them unless they upgrade to the latest version
of their software.
Some standards are truly independent - free from Machiavellian
agendas and widely adopted across industries. One example is HTML.
HTML is generally adhered to by the major browsers - Microsoft's
Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator. Another independent one
is structured query language (SQL), a standard interactive and
programming language for getting information from a database, as
well as updating it. But, in my opinion these are the exceptions -
most standards are open in name alone.
So how can you avoid getting locked in to vendor standards? The
first thing is to realise that most of the work needed for
successful e-business integration is preparation. Companies need to
plan, prepare, discuss and plan again.
Second is freedom of choice. Nowadays, companies need the ability
to quickly plug and play with new partners and services and keep
ahead of the markets. Make sure you are aware of all the
possibilities by not blindly following the vendor's 'requirements'.
Also, retain some control by not outsourcing all of your projects.
Remember that you have more home-grown business process knowledge
than your outsourcer.
Furthermore, do not homogenise integration projects into one huge,
inflexible task. Adopt incremental changes instead, retaining
control over the standards used at each stage. Finally, think
carefully about choosing a supplier. Considering the issues and
values that are important to you will help you make the right
decision in finding the right vendor.
Kevin Brown, business development executive, Attachmate
www.attachmate.com