As the Web services and XML juggernaut continues into 2003, the technologies will continue to revolutionize traditional application integration, providing standard mechanisms to replace proprietary methods. And the combination of these technologies is enabling decentralization and providing for component-based software, industry heavyweights say. XML provides a strategic data format while Web services is “fundamentally about moving and transacting XML-based data,” said Neil Charney, director of Microsoft’s platform strategy group in Redmond, Wash. “The digitized information that [CIOs] have, they’re now looking at that as something that can be stored as XML. XML and Web services will continue to facilitate transactions and the movement of business information in a more seamless fashion, said Bob Sutor, director of Web services technology at IBM, in Armonk, N.Y. SAP’s Kaj Van De Loo, director of product strategy in Newtown Square, Pa., stressed the pervasiveness of XML as an alternative to proprietary formats. “I don’t think today any IT department that’s thinking about exchanging data between systems is not considering using XML” he said. Prior to XML,”everybody had their own proprietary data formats, so you had connectors. If you wanted to connect two systems, you had to find people who know both of them,” he said. Web services “is going to be truly disruptive,” he added. Rather than considering what in their applications they can expose to the outside world, Van De Loo said developers will have to think differently. “The new way is what could other systems want to know out of my application,” he said. Web services holds the promise of distributing functionality and data across a heterogeneous landscape, Van De Loo added. Sun Microsystems’ Drew Engstrom, senior market strategist of Web services, concurred that XML-based Web services provides an alternative to proprietary integration technology. “Essentially, XML has become the neutral syntax for exchanging data between applications,” he said. Application development changes as IT shops move more toward Web-based technologies such as XML, HTTP, SOAP, and WSDL, he said. “As that becomes more pervasive, it not only has a technology impact on the IT shop, it also fundamentally is going to change the way applications are built in terms of the application development life cycle, and the tools and community needed to support those,” Engstrom said. Instead of Web services serving as a mere wrapper around existing applications, developers will begin to move to a more componentized mode of development, according to Engstrom. The more applications are broken down into discrete functions, the easier it is for software to evolve, he said. Web services makes it easier to collaborate with partners, Engstrom said. “If I’m an auto manufacturer, [and] I have a big, monolithic application with proprietary APIs, it becomes very expensive and difficult to give access to my applications,” he said. “If my application is exposed as a Web service that solves a lot of issues [such as firewall access].” Web services serves to disrupt in that it leads to more decentralization, Engstrom said. “More transactions will take place on smaller servers at the edge of the network versus big servers at the heart of the network,” he said. John Kiger, San Jose, Calif.-based BEA’s director of Web services strategy, said reuse is a critical benefit of Web services. “Web services will enable new application architectures, particularly as a catalyst for service-oriented architectures,” he said. — Paul Krill Technology Industry