As the battle for Web services heats up, open standards will be
key, says Peter Joseph, director of corporate strategy at Novell
EMEA.
Web services is a technology hot topic. In the last six months it
has gained prominence as a result of industry giants - Sun,
Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Novell and SAP - evangelising their
respective Web services initiatives.
Each claims that its Web services initiative is the way of the
future and that the company's solution is "open". However, with
each of the main Web services players defining open standards
differently, this leaves many users perplexed over the true meaning
of open standards. Certainly people are concerned how the various
Web services on offer can inter-operate. More importantly, these
"standards" could actually be inhibiting the uptake of Web
services.
In the rush to proclaim their Web services as open, some companies
are defining "openness" as adherence to Internet standards such as
SOAP, UDDI, HTML and XML. "Open" standards can hardly be considered
open if they are vendor driven and have yet to be ratified by the
industry.
There is an inherent danger within such a standard. Vendors could
change it instantaneously without prior consultation with
businesses that have adopted their Web services offering.
Furthermore, such businesses run the real risk of being tied not
only to the vendor's software development cycles but also their
licensing policies and other IT dependencies such as mandatory
software and hardware upgrades. On the other hand, ratified
standards are credible open standards because they are industry
driven, ie a consortium
 | | "'Open' standards can hardly be
considered open if they are vendor driven and are yet to be
ratified by the industry" | | | | | |
| | Peter Joseph | | |
|
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of companies coming together to develop and agree on what works for
the sector as a whole.
With the current debacle about open standards, businesses looking
to implement Web services today should look beyond standards and
instead investigate the methodology and open languages used to
develop Web services.
"Openness" in Web services boils down to two simple factors: they
must be platform agnostic and have the power to change in a dynamic
business world where standards for new technologies are continually
evolving. Novell's Net services software is probably one of a
handful of Web services offerings that embodies open standards by
unifying all types of networks - Internet, intranets, extranets -
as one Net across all leading operating platforms.
While open standards will remain important to businessess, users
should not neglect other factors that have an impact on the
"openness" of the Web service architecture they plan to
deploy.
Want another view? Read what technologies Microsoft .Net
Developer Group director Mark Greatorex thinks will win the battle
to deliver Web services >>