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April 2, 2001

Let's See If "Coopetition" Works For Web Services

By Jason Levitt (jlevitt@cmp.com)

Will Web Services succeed in simplifying business communications over the Internet? Certainly its major backers--HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun--believe so, but it has a long way to go before its promise is realized. With so much standards ground to cover, and so much back-office complexity already in place, it's easy to be cynical about its future.

The best news is that the roar of the industry hype machine hasn't been deafening this time around, and there aren't 200 startups trying to sell some version of Web Services at a Web Services Trade Show somewhere.

Web Services, the nascent application framework for business-to-business communications, isn't even on most IT department's radar screens, and there's a good reason for this: The messengers--HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun--are promoting Web Services as a sidenote to a lot of new or revised software-server applications. Most IT departments, if they're even considering upgrading server software, could care less about some additional software that won't even reach its potential anytime soon.

None of this lessens the vision of Web Services, which I'd personally like to see come about. I spell out that vision in this week's issue (April 2nd, 2001) of InformationWeek as well as in a previous Internet Zone column from October 2000.

Coopetition
"Coopetition" is a word I've heard used to describe the alliance of HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun. They cooperate on standards but compete on implementations. Cooperation plus competition equals coopetition. Easier said than done, of course.

Microsoft, in particular, isn't known for its support of any standards that might provide a reason not to run Windows. And Web Services de-couples applications from the details of operating system implementations rather nicely.

So far, things seem to be on track, but on the first sign that Web Services isn't heading down the straight and narrow path of righteous, vendor independent, interoperability, I'm sure the din will be deafening.

Similarly, if any of Microsoft's alliance partners strays from the flock, or otherwise fails to maintain its commitment to the ongoing standards process, things could fall apart fast.

The Wait For Standards
The light-hearted message of Web Services' potential is clear: Standards for the transmission of information really simplify things. TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML, the three major open standards on which the Internet is based, transformed the world in the 1990s. Nearly universal support of these standards by vendors and businesses has made communication over the Internet relatively effortless.

For Web Services to succeed, it needs the same fundamental basis: open standards, seamless interoperability, and ubiquitous implementation. At the moment, it has none of these.

SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, and the three foundation protocols for Web Service, aren't open standards. They're draft specifications of technologies that are owned by IBM, Microsoft, and others. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The specifications for SOAP and WSDL have been offered to the World Wide Web Consortium within a reasonable time frame. UDDI, which is actually a set of protocols and APIs, is being worked on privately by Ariba, IBM, Microsoft, and others and is expected to be submitted to standards groups at some future date.

Proposed Web Services Standards:
STANDARD	ORIGIN	PURPOSE	RECENT STATUS	EXPECTED FUTURE
UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration)	• Created by Ariba, IBM, and Microsoft, • Version 1.0 draft specification released in September 2000	A set of XML protocols and an infrastructure for the description and discovery of business processes	• The UDDI specification hasn't yet been submitted to any standards organizations • Draft version 1.0 in use by developers	Two more draft specifications are planned before UDDI is turned over to a standards organization some time during the next 12 months.
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)	• Created by DevelopMentor, Microsoft, and Userland Software • Microsoft solicited industry feedback on the SOAP 0.9 specification in September 1999	An XML-based protocol for messaging and RPC-style communication between two processes	• SOAP 1.1 specification simultaneously released and submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium in May 2000 • SOAP 1.1 specification in use by developers	The World Wide Web Consortium's XML Protocol (XP) Working Group is working on a SOAP standard, which will be called XP
WSDL (Web Services Description language)	• Created by IBM and Microsoft by merging previous proposals: SCL, SDL, and NASSL • Version 1.0 specification released in September 2000	An XML language used to describe how to connect to a Web Service.	• WSDL 1.0 specification submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium in March, 2001 • WSDL 1.0 specification in use by developers	The World Wide Web Consortium has not yet announced what action they will take on the WSDL submission

Source: InformationWeek

But even if these do become open standards, there's still quite a bit of missing functionality that businesses will need before they can seriously consider developing Web Services. XML standards for things like authentication, identity, management, transactions, quality of service, and payment need to be resolved.

In the meantime, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun, as well as numerous other vendors, will be offering their own products to fill these functionality gaps. The result is that the lightweight, loosely-coupled, Web Services interfaces could become lost inside of a lot of application infrastructure that doesn't share the same vision of vendor independence and seamless interoperability.

And then there's ebXML, which shares the Web Services ideal of global interoperability for business communications, but accomplishes it in a different way. EbXML, really an entire framework for global E-business, has been designed largely to move companies from EDI into the XML world. EDI is the 25-year old standard for global commerce that's used by a relatively small number of large vendors. EDI was also intended to simplify business-to-business communication, but has never been able to surmount barriers such as cost, complexity of implementation, and inadequate tools.

The problem here is that ebXML overlaps quite a bit with Web Services functionality. EbXML has its own registry and other infrastructure components that parallel Web Services, but are different. The only bright spot in the ebXML evolution, which will culminate when the ebXML 1.0 specification is released in May, is that the ebXML standards organization has agreed to support a version of SOAP, the Web Services messaging protocol. (Actually, a World Wide Web Consortium draft specification called "SOAP with attachments," which adds the capability of attaching binary, non-XML documents to a SOAP message, was needed to replace the messaging transport in ebXML). This will allow basic interoperability between Web Services and ebXML, should both of them become successful, but doesn't resolve the fact that they're trying to achieve similar goals in different ways.

End Note
EbXML is the exception, rather than the rule. But with so many standards being proposed, the opportunities for HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, or Sun to stray from the alliance are numerous. The standards arena is famous for its petty, market-driven infighting and political filibusters that can keep standards stranded for years.

"We're not charitable organizations," one representative of the alliance said at a recent trade show panel discussion, while answering a question about strategy. That's an important fact to remember while we watch Web Services evolve.

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