It ain't magic
Web services will enhance—if not revolutionize—supply chain collaboration
By Sidney Hill, Jr., executive editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 6/1/2002 12:00:00 AM
Don't believe everything you hear about Web services. Yes, they will make it easier to exchange information between disparate systems. They will even make it easier to collaborate with your outside trading partners.
But despite what you may have heard, Web services will not solve all of your system integration or business communication problems—not today, at least. In fact, Web services technology is so immature that most industry analysts don't foresee widespread adoption for at least another two to three years.
Then why are we already hearing so much about Web services? Larry Ellison, the outspoken CEO of Oracle—the enterprise and database software vendor based in Redwood Shores, Calif.—attributes the fuss over Web services to the high-tech community's "fashion industry" mentality.
"Silicon Valley, like the fashion industry, likes to constantly tell us what's hot and what not," Ellison says. "This year, Web services are hot; they're the next big thing. Before that, it was B2B, and then B2C. How many of these next big things are we going to see before people realize that technology is not magic?"
Web services technology is not magic, but it already is being used, even in its immature state, to do some rather amazing things. For instance, manufacturing software vendors are using Web services to make bits of functionality from their applications available to anyone with a Web browser and a valid password. Such services are proving to be an efficient and cost-effective way of facilitating on-line collaboration with both customers and suppliers. And that development alone is fueling a lot of the talk about Web services revolutionizing the way businesses deploy software applications.
What's a Web service?
"The hype says that eventually I will be able to go out on the Internet and find the exact program I need to solve a specific business problem at any instant," says Bob Parker, a vice president with Boston-based analyst firm AMR Research. "I then will be able to rent that program for 15 or 20 minutes, and use it to solve my problem without having to worry about how it fits into my corporate computing environment. But that scenario is so far away that it may never happen."
From a technology standpoint, a Web service is a software component that passes information from one application to another over the Internet, without the need for a direct connection between those two applications, and without regard for which operating systems the applications run on.
Anyone who has used a Federal Express or UPS tracking number to check the status of an order placed on a retail Web site has experience using Web services. Both Federal Express and UPS have forged links between the corporate servers that house their package tracking software and the retailers' sites. When a customer types in a tracking number, they are launching a Web service that queries the Federal Express or UPS tracking application for the status of that shipment, and then returns an answer to the customer's browser.
In the manufacturing realm, Quattro, a subsidiary of German automaker Audi, is using a Web service to pass real-time information back and forth between an enterprise resources planning (ERP) system that runs on Microsoft's Windows NT platform and a Java-based production planning application. The link between these systems enables Quattro, which makes custom sports cars based on Audi frames, to quickly line up the resources it needs—including material, machines, and personnel with special skills—to build a car with the exact features a customer wants whenever it receives a new order.
A collaboration tool
Skyva International, Medford, Mass., supplied the production-planning package. AP, a German software vendor that markets its products primarily to medium-size manufacturers throughout Europe, supplied the ERP system. The two vendors collaborated to build Web service infrastructure, which uses eXtensible markup language (XML) as the primary tool for translating data that passes between the two applications.
In some ways, the furor over Web services is similar to the early buzz that surrounded the advent of public trading exchanges. The idea was that companies would use exchanges to constantly search out suppliers offering a better price on components and services. What the early exchange developers failed to realize, however, is that most companies—and manufacturers in particular—consider such things as product quality and supplier reliability to be more important than price.
That fact caused many manufacturers to shy away from the large public exchanges and instead start building private trading exchanges that connected them with suppliers that they already know and trust. There is evidence that Web services can accelerate this trend, even extending the ability to create private exchanges to smaller enterprises.
"Our customers are not at the point of using Web services to go out and search for people that have applications or information that they need," says Bill Lilegdon, director of front-office solutions for Frontstep, Columbus, Ohio, an enterprise software supplier that targets medium-size manufacturers. "They are using Web services more as a common tool for collaborating with several key partners."
Instant functionality
Frontstep has packaged the available-to-promise (ATP) and capable-to-promise (CTP) features of its Syteline advanced planning and scheduling system as a Web service. To make this service work, a manufacturer installs a piece of software on a server that is connected to the manufacturer's Web site. When a customer wants know about a product's availability, they click a link on the Web site that presents a form for them to fill out. Once the form is filled out, the Web service software converts the information into an XML document that is passed to the CTP module of Syteline. The Syteline system, upon reading the XML message, queries its database for the information the customer requested. That information is then converted into a second XML document and sent back to the Web services application server, which displays it on the customer's screen.
AMR's Parker refers to programs like this as "Web services with a small w" because they only make partial use of what is emerging as the industry-standard protocol stack for B2B Web services. That stack starts with XML, which is the method of creating the actual message being transmitted between applications. The second component is a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) interface, which tells people who want to access a Web service how to format their requests.
The third piece—Web services description language (WSDL)—is used to write a description of what an individual Web service does. The final piece of the stack—which is called a Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) protocol—is used to create an entry for the Web service in what amounts to a global Web services directory.
The UDDI and WSDL protocols are the primary drivers behind the notion of users being able to pluck applications out of cyberspace at will. Some industry experts believe these protocols will allow companies to seek out and establish relationships with new trading partners at a moment's notice as well. These predictions are based on the assumption that users will be inclined to search the UDDI directory the way consumers browse the Yellow Pages whenever they need a new application.
Automatic conversions
It's unlikely that users will ever need to know anything about Web Services protocols. That's because the major platform developers are embedding the protocols inside their products, which in turn makes it easier for application developers to convert their programs to Web services.
"When we develop on the [Microsoft] .Net platform, all we have to do is say we want an application to be a Web service, and that conversion is done automatically," says Linda Brooks, a vice president with MAPICS, an Atlanta-based enterprise software supplier. Platform vendors Sun Microsystems, Palo Alto, Calif., and IBM, Armonk, N.Y., also have built mechanisms for converting applications to Web services.
Some business application vendors are making things even easier for users by embedding Web services in portal solutions. MAPICS has taken this approach with its recently released Customer and Supplier Portals. Indianapolis-based Made2Manage Systems also is embedding Web services in the latest edition of its M2M VIP portal offering.
Major cost savings
Press-Seal Gasket, Ft. Wayne, Ind., is using the Made2Manage portal to give its customers almost free rein to search for information related to their accounts. This application operates on what Made2Manage refers to as a "hybrid hosted" model. That means Press-Seal hosts part of the software that is required run the service at its plant, and Made2Manage hosts the rest at a separate data center.
Made2Manage hosts the M2M VIP portal, which Press-Seal customers access by clicking a link on Press-Seal's Web site. When a customer requests certain information, such as order status, the portal launches a Web service that packages the request in XML format and sends it to an application called M2M Gateway. That application resides on a server at Press-Seal's plant.
The Gateway application then goes to the appropriate place in Press-Seal's ERP system, which is the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System, to retrieve the data. It then converts that data to a second XML document and displays it to the customer through the VIP portal interface.
The M2M Gateway is a standard part of the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System, but Press-Seal pays an annual subscription fee for Made2Manage to host the VIP portal. Chris Slater, Press-Seal's IT administrator, declined to say how much Press-Seal pays for that subscription, but he did say, "It is relatively cheap for the amount of functionality that the service provides."
Fox Electronics, Fort Myers, Fla., expects to save several million dollars by using the Web services features inside the MAPICS Supplier Portal—instead of electronic data interchange (EDI)—to collaborate with suppliers. Fox Electronics already is a user of the MAPICS Extended Enterprise software suite.
"We need a faster way to get demand information to suppliers," says Gene Trefethen, CEO of Fox Electronics, which builds precision time-keeping devices for use in high-tech products, as well as in automobiles and airplanes. "We considered EDI, but when we talked to some of our trading partners who are using EDI, we found out about the high costs of connecting even with a single supplier. So we chose to wait for a better solution, and we believe a product that incorporates Web services will give us what we need."
| For More Info: | ||
| AP: www.ap-gmbh.de | IBM: www.ibm.com | Made2Manage Systems: www.made2manage.com |
| MAPICS: www.mapics.com | Oracle: www.oracle.com | SAP: www.sap.com |
| Skyva International: www.skyva.com | Sun Microsystems: www.sun.com | |
