If your IT organization is preparing to charge into a Web services initiative in 2002, start preparing now to overcome several barriers that could stand between you and an effective Web services implementation.
A recent report by Boston-based IT research and consulting firm Delphi Group, “Web Services and Business Process Management,” identifies five major hurdles as perceived by IT executives. While none is insurmountable, each represents potential delays to implementation or barriers to getting maximum return on a Web services investment.
According to the report, the major challenges facing Web services projects, and the percentage of IT execs who cite each one as their primary concern, include:
- 1. Inexperience in architecting Web services (19.4%);
- 2. Changing internal organizational culture to embrace Web services (18.5%);
- 3. Multiple standards for implementation (also 18.5%);
- 4. No perceived business case for Web services (14.6); and
- 5. The difficulty of managing relationships with other organizations (6.8%).
There are numerous definitions of Web services, which has led to some confusion among IT executives. Loosely defined, Web services allow enterprises to knit together various business information and applications, both in-house and with outside partners, by using standards for integration such as XML, SOAP, and UDDI. Web services are considered a relatively inexpensive way to derive more value from previous IT investments by improving workflow and business efficiency – a major draw in the current economic climate.
Larry Hawes, senior advisor for Delphi Group and the author of the report, boils Web services down even further: “It’s taking what you have and changing the way the pieces interact with each other,” he says.
This relates to the number-one challenge in the minds of IT executives: Many in-house IT staffs are inexperienced in architecting Web services. “There’s a pretty good supply of Java developers these days, but what there isn’t is J2EE architects,” he says. The positive news is that there are vendors coming to the rescue to provide architectural frameworks used by application developers to build Web services. Hawes says, “When a vendor like that exists, you know it’s a real problem.” Among those offering help, Sun Microsystems is offering J2EE Blueprints, frameworks for developing applications to address specific functionality in Web services.
Second on IT execs’ minds is the challenge of convincing users across the enterprise of the benefit of Web services. CIOs and other top-level technology pros are already convinced: 80% of those who responded to Delphi Group’s survey said they consider Web services to be “important to imperative” to their business strategy.
The report notes that it’s easier to build a new technology than it is to get people to use it. This is especially true with a technology like Web services, which is all about collaboration and sharing information to reach a business goal. Many corporate cultures are “still attuned to hoarding and protecting information and business processes, especially when dealing with other organizations,” according to the report. To overcome this hurdle, Delphi says IT executives must work to establish a collaborative mindset and explain the business benefits of Web services if they are to gain maximum effectiveness and cooperation.
Third on the list of hurdles are the multiple standards for Web services implementations. This point plays into the general confusion when it comes to the many definitions of the technology, in addition to the jumble of acronyms surrounding it, such as XML, SOAP, UDDI, WSDL. Each represents a specific technology standard that enables applications to communicate with other applications.