From http://www.internetweek.com/lead/lead121400.htm

Thursday, December 14, 2000

An Alphabet Soup Of B2B Standards
SOAP, ebXML, UDDI and others will slowly gain momentum in 2001
By JOHN WEBSTER
A new set of Internet standards promises to change the way com-panies do business with one another, just as HTML and HTTP once paved the way for Web-based electronic commerce. But as you make your New Year's resolutions, don't bet your e-business that these standards will change the way you interact with partners and customers overnight.

Although XML has become the base protocol for sharing data among different Web applications, companies have only recently started to use it broadly for B2B collaboration and transactions. In less than two years, XML has made it possible for businesses to establish trading relationships without relying on EDI networks, facilitating the formation of thousands of e-marketplaces and B2B exchange auctions. While XML allows data from various sources to be represented in a common way in databases, a new crop of Internet standards promises to simplify the way e-businesses form trading relationships, perhaps even establishing them on the fly.



There are more than 120 standards that extend XML. Many are designed for specific industries or addressing granular business processes, such as sharing accounting data among companies. But when it comes to simplifying B2B trading, perhaps the most important new standards are Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), for accessing objects over the Internet that are described in XML; Universal Discovery, Description and Integration (UDDI), an effort announced in early September that provides a registry of e-businesses, the services and products they offer and how to access their systems; and Electronic Business XML (ebXML), which proponents say will provide a common formatting and communications protocol between businesses.

In the coming year, applications ranging from database servers to software that integrates disparate transaction processing systems will support these new standards. In time, proponents say, that will let e-businesses think nothing of establishing a secure trading relationship with a partner. Today that process requires all parties in a relationship to make sure their applications can communicate either through specific trading exchanges or directly. However, even with the release of software that supports the new standards, many of the appli-cations will at best be suitable only for pilots in 2001. It remains to be seen how well they will work and how quickly they'll be adopted.

Proponents say the standards will be the technology underpinnings that let e-businesses automate the way B2B relationships are established.

In the real estate industry, for example, that might let an agency link insurers, title companies, property owners, lenders and agents. Or a retailer might want to link up quickly with a new supplier, experts say. But while these standards are still in varying stages of development, SOAP is one that has a good shot of being implemented this year, analysts say. Originally proposed by Microsoft in 1999, the protocol was recently submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which formed the XML Protocol working group. Microsoft is supporting SOAP in its .Net architecture, and IBM says it will support SOAP in its WebSphere application development suite to let developers integrate XML components into its DB2 database, MQ Series application integration software, Tivoli network management software and Visual Age for Java developer tools. SOAP will let e-businesses take object-oriented code, which could contain such specific functions as a customized shopping cart for a specific type of transaction, and share it with business partners.

"As more applications, such as IBM's VisualAge for Java, and other integrated development environments start using SOAP, business partners will be able to reverse-engineer application code," says Randy Mowen, director of data management at The Bekins Co., a freight-shipping company.

Mowen says tweaking the code would let his company provide APIs that will allow customers to track shipments. Kodak and others have indicated they will take advantage of Bekins' service, he says. When Kodak ships products to distributors, it can track the status of those shipments. Moreover, Bekins could offer its tracking application to Kodak to use internally in ERP or in inventory management systems.

"This will allow anyone who places an order to build tracking into different Web applications," Mowen says.

While SOAP will be important for exchanging software components, ebXML--sponsored by the United Nations' Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)--is the front-running candidate for standardizing how XML documents are formatted. It's also a messaging protocol that describes how data should be interchanged securely.

David Burdett, director of product management, standards and gateways at Commerce One, says he believes that ebXML will be the most important B2B standard. "It has gained the backing of the whole EDI community as the way to forward XML," he says. The initiative is due to be completed this spring, and implementations based on it will be developed later in the year.

After a company has chosen online business partners, ebXML provides the business communication protocol, and the Internet provides the connectivity, says Guy Gergan, vice president at Montgomery Guaranty Trust Co.

"With ebXML, it doesn't matter what you're sending," he says. While they wait for ebXML to be finalized, e-businesses can rely on proprietary protocols, such as Commerce One's XML Common Business Library (xCBL), a document and content protocol that companies can use with their business partners. Burdett says IT managers should view xCBL as a "stepping-stone" until ebXML is ready for widespread implementation.

A similar alternative to ebXML is Ariba's Commerce XML (cXML). According to Anne-Marie Keane, vice president of B2B e-commerce at Staples.com, cXML is mature enough to use now and to continue using until ebXML becomes available. Staples.com is focused primarily on using one implementation of XML--the Ariba version--rather than implementing all the other XML standards that will emerge in the coming year.

"I definitely feel that cXML will be important in 2001," Keane says. "Ariba's dominance in e-procurement is a major driving force. Other procurement application vendors know that to compete with Ariba, they need to demonstrate supplier connectivity. By following the same standard as Ariba, any supplier that can connect to Ariba can connect easily to the other procurement apps using cXML."

Staples.com began using cXML first and found that it could quickly hook suppliers to its systems. Such "supplier enablement" speeds deployment of e-marketplace and e-procurement applications, Keane says.

Standards Under Review
EbXML, a more vendor-neutral architecture and data transport, routing and packaging specification, is still in the draft stage and won't be finalized until late next year, says Burton Group analyst Jim Kobielus.

CEFACT and OASIS are more optimistic. Last week the organizations said ebXML's core technical infrastructure will be completed by March, two months ahead of their previous target.

The W3C is still reviewing SOAP. "SOAP will be one of the most important standards in 2001," says Josh Walker, an analyst at Forrester Research. "SOAP will bring some standardization to interorganizational commerce. Up to now, SOAP has been mostly talk, but this is the year that we will see SOAP beginning to be implemented widely in products and among business partners."

E-businesses will use SOAP, which describes how to access XML applications, both internally to automate integration of applications like those for ERP with inventory management applications, and externally to automate application integration with business partners, says Scott Hebner, IBM's director of e-business marketing.

SOAP will let e-businesses share applications, not just data, with their business partners and customers.

It will be some time before both SOAP and ebXML are widely used, Kobielus says.

But while these standards promise to facilitate the exchange of data, e-businesses still need a way to find each other. UDDI, announced in September, will allow e-businesses to share information through a common registry, much like DNS servers allow browsers to find Web sites. More than 130 companies say they will support UDDI.

"UDDI is a business registry that automates the process of establishing business relationships on the Internet by letting companies describe their business, publish their Web services and define a language they use," Hebner says.

That could mean automating an e-business's exposure to customers and partners, says Brad Veselick, CEO of brokerage firm Couch Braunsdorf Insurance.

As it stands, consumers can use insurance company Web sites to get quotes or find agents. Afterward, however, a policy still needs to be set up over the telephone or by regular mail.

"It has to be handled the same way as it was 20 years ago," Veselick says. "Someone still has to pick up the phone to complete a transaction. UDDI would allow us to remove some of the human interaction." That's because the brokerage could exchange quote information with its clients, such as Chubb, Hartford and Travelers, he adds.

A B2B Registry
UDDI was initially proposed by IBM, Microsoft and Ariba, which were later joined by Hewlett-Packard. The founding companies last month launched a test version of the repository (www.uddi.org/register.html), containing information about companies and the services they offer, as well as how the services should be accessed. It's unclear when the registry will go live.

Without UDDI, unless a company uses the same applications and Web services as its trading partners, it must make large technology investments to transact business using the Internet. UDDI is intended to enable businesses to find each other and make their needs and their technological and e-business capabilities known.

If a company has a business need that requires a trading partner, it would input criteria as described by the UDDI registry. For example, a company can look for a shipping company that can ship goods globally and handle large packages.

UDDI would allow an e-business to provide access to their partners' services, says Couch Braunsdorf's Veselick.

"Different operations could be funneled by us as an aggregator of services," Veselick says. "When someone moves to New Jersey, for example, we'd be listed as an aggregator who can provide real estate, attorney, home inspection and mortgage services."

UDDI is based on a standard registry services concept, with Yellow, White and Green Page business listings. White Pages state a company's location and contact information, Yellow Pages describe what the company sells and the terms and conditions for interaction, and Green Pages contain the XML-based APIs for their systems.

The specification's biggest hurdles will be acceptance and buy-in from businesses themselves. There will also be technical challenges, such as scalability and physical implementation.

"The business registry will contain published programmable interfaces so you can query a company's inventory and it tells you how to place a purchase order," IBM's Hebner says. "Businesses will register the same way URLs are registered with DNS."

UDDI is similar to Microsoft's BizTalk in that both use SOAP as a transport protocol and provide service description, location and binding specs, but BizTalk is proprietary. Despite the still-messy amalgam of acronyms that dotted the XML landscape, e-businesses in 2001 should see a handful of usable B2B standards that use XML as a foundation.

In contrast, last year was spent laying the foundation. "The standards were slower to develop in the XML space because we were really still developing XML itself--the things on which you built other things," says Bob Sutor, IBM's director of e-business standards strategies. "Now most of the major pieces are there so people can build on at a higher level."

As IT organizations evaluate how useful the emerging B2B standards will be, questions remain as to XML's efficiency, difficulty of integration and linking the myriad vertical industry specifications.

One technical hurdle may be the size of XML messages, says John Rymer, president of Upstream Consulting.

"Some companies don't know yet how they'll handle that overhead, but this isn't online analytical processing so maybe that won't matter," he says.

B2B exchanges are emerging for specific industries. For example, the chemical industry data exchange (CIDX) specification uses XML and EDI to let chemical companies' systems share information and conduct transactions among each other. There are even those that are targeted for specific niches within an industry, such as the Financial Products Markup Language (fPML), which will allow institutional investors to trade derivatives on the Web.

Despite XML's promises to simplify the trading of e-business documents, some IT managers point out that XML-based B2B standards aren't ideal for many companies. A company could end up giving up some competitive advantages by exposing its internal applications and services through XML-based B2B standards.

"If one ends up cooperating with 30 other insurance companies, it might not want to open itself up to all of them," Veselick says.

Vanishing Specs
As with any set of standards, many of those based on XML and aimed at e-business are doomed. One example is the Information Content and Exchange (ICE) protocol for exchanging business information, Forrester's Walker says. ICE was intended to exchange message-based formats between companies, much like XML-based protocols, such as Microsoft's BizTalk.

"ICE is one of the standards that may fade out in 2001," Walker says. "It has not generated much support, and the XML community is finding other standards that solve the same problem a different way. I don't see it rallying this year."

Of those that seem destined for success, IT managers shouldn't hold their collective breath waiting for products to support them.

"These are very ambitious initiatives, and it's not clear that the specifications can be completed or, if completed, implemented in multivendor interoperable environments in 2001," Kobielus says. "There are still no standards in B2B message passing--just wannabe standards in various states of completion and evangelization."

Tim Wilson contributed to this story.