Web services could make life easier for vendors and users
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 1/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
The emergence of Web services promises to make it easier for merging software vendors—like Epicor and Scala—to blend their separate product lines. That means users shouldn't have to worry about being pressured to buy a whole new set of applications every time one of their vendors is acquired.
Web services can facilitate this level of system compatibility because they represent the first set of technology standards that every technology vendor—from major infrastructure players like IBM and Microsoft to competing application suppliers like Oracle and SAP—is willing to embrace. Only the Internet itself has garnered such widespread industry support.
A Web service is a part of an application that is wrapped in a layer of specific standards. That packaging enables the application component—which is referred to as a service—to communicate instantly with any other application component that is wrapped in the same set of standards.
Industry analysts expect Web services to usher in a new era in which most businesses will migrate to a "service-oriented architecture." You can read more about these developments on p. 44.
CIOs should govern Web services now
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