Adam Eisner, theWHIR.com
October 4, 2002 – The concept of Web services made a large jump from hype to reality last week when BT Ignite introduced a new addition to its business strategy.
The company, which serves as the Internet services arm of European communications giant British Telecom, unveiled an “innovative five-step approach to Web Services” that it believes will become a significant revenue generator by 2004. The premise of Web services is to use open standards to allow Internet-based between applications, and the company feels its approach will help customers rapidly design and deploy low-risk Web service solutions.
Andy Green, CEO of BT Ignite, said its offering would have a competitive advantage over other firms because it has backed by a major telecommunications firm. “We are confident that our approach combined with our core competencies in managed networks, application delivery and systems integration will give BT real competitive advantage,” he said. The company expects to go live with its solution in January 2003.
Although BT will certainly be able to provide technical power to its Web service offering, its financial clout will definitely help as well. Companies that may have at one point been contenders to challenge BT Ignite’ s Web services vision – Worldport, Digex Europe and WorldCom chief among them – have either scaled back their European operations or left the market completely.
The company’s Web services strategy is based on a five step approach that begins with internal development of technologies for a customer and ultimately results in the deployment of a management tool it calls the Web Services Management Layer (WSML), “to address the key commercial and operational issues for customers of security, control and performance,” the company said. BT Ignite also said it is currently running several examples of Web services internally, including a “broadband availability checker” that identifies whether broadband Internet service is available in a geographic area by reading a customer’s telephone number.
The announcement marks one of the first times that a major European communications provider has made a serious commitment to Web services, adding a greatly-needed element of legitimacy to concept, which to this point has been based much on theory and little in action. However, a recent report from The Yankee Group, a renowned research firm, suggests that BT Ignite is on the right track. A report released in late August titled “Web Services: Creeping into Europe” suggested that Web services are slowly making their way in to Europe, with major corporations leading the way. The report predicted that financial service firms and telecom operators would fully leverage Web services by the end of 2004. The report also said that other sectors are expected to follow suit soon after.
“Across Europe, large multinationals are focusing on consolidating multiple instances of applications and legacy systems,” said Yankee Group senior analyst Landry Fevre.
BT also introduced two major partners to back up the legitimacy of its plan. The company said that software giant Microsoft would be one of its first partners, and that the two firms would team up to develop an enterprise-level Web services environment based on Microsoft’s .NET platform. Microsoft is hoping for .NET to become widely popular among companies which adopt Web service technologies.
BT also said it would partner with Flamenco Networks, which provides Web services networking solutions, for several components of its service.
Although BT admits its strategy is both a vision and a product, the company firmly believes that Web services is quickly maturing in to a viable business solution. “Web services is a big vision – the ultimate linking technology that will connect computers, software, businesses and users together in a single, seamless universe and delivering unlimited possibilities,” BT Ignite CE Green said. “We now need to make it practical and usable for businesses.”
About theWHIR.com
Since 2000, The Web Host Industry Review has made a name for itself as the foremost authority of the Web hosting industry providing reliable, insightful and comprehensive news, interviews and resources to the hosting community. TheWHIR is an iNET Interactive property. For more information on iNET Interactive, visit http://www.inetinteractive.com
No related posts.
