Introduction

Integrating software applications is a top priority for IT directors and CIOs in today’s global enterprises. They recognize that well-integrated applications greatly enhance the productivity of employees. For example, a support representative can better assist the customer if he knows what problems he has experienced in the past, what products he has purchased, and where more-detailed information about those products can be found. However, all this information is probably stored in different software applications. For the support representative to jump from one application to another would be inefficient, especially with a customer waiting on the phone. Ideally, all this information would be easily accessible on a single computer screen.
Integrating the various applications would be fairly easy if they were all from same vendor or running on the same platform. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Today’s organizations are faced with the problem of integrating applications from different vendors running on different platforms. Mergers and acquisitions result in multiple disparate technologies and applications in use within a single enterprise. Even when a new application is purchased, it is impractical.

The integration challenge becomes even more complex when you consider the supply-chain activities of a retailer such as Wal-Mart, which has thousands of partners and suppliers. The inventory and ordering system at Wal-Mart must interface with thousands of supplier systems. Each of those suppliers work with hundreds of retailers. It is not likely that all involved systems use similar technologies or run on the same platform.

Web Services were created to address this challenge: the integration of heterogeneous technologies and applications. Web Services make it possible to glue together these disparate technologies within the enterprise or across different companies. In a sense, Web Services enable the creation of a “grid” of interoperating technologies and applications, which facilitate the “frictionless” modern commerce environment.