The Web services paradigm is poised to become the dominant form of
distributed computing this decade and beyond. Indeed, A. T. Kearney, an EDS
global consultancy, found that 75% of companies ranging from less than $50
million to more than $1 billion in revenues and across 20 vertical industries
have already deployed one or more Web service.
The Benefits of Web Services
Enterprise integration is consistently one of the top three priorities of IT
organizations and accounts for $50B in spending annually. Web services are
becoming the technology of choice for solving pressing point-to-point
integration needs because of the inherent benefits of the approach. Foremost
among these benefits are cost reductions, business agility, and component
reuse.
Cost Reductions
Reducing costs of an integration project as dramatically as 80% have gotten
Web services a lot of attention. M... (more)
Service-oriented architectures (SOA) and autonomic computing are among the
hottest topics in IT today. SOA simplifies integration and facilitates the
componentization of enterprise-wide systems, thereby enabling optimal
business agility. Autonomic computing allows these systems to operate without
human intervention - through self-configuring, self-healing, and
self-managing capabilities. By combining autonomic computing with SOA,
enterprises can now achieve a new IT utopia, named "Autonomic SOA." However,
this new level of autonomic computing goes beyond just reacting to
tradit... (more)
Concerns about security are cited as the single largest barrier to rapid Web
services adoption. Yet most Web services today are fairly straightforward
point-to-point integrations that can be securely implemented using only
digital certificates and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol.
Regardless of security strategy, enterprises are well advised to monitor
their Web services to ensure security has not been compromised. Taken
together, widely available standard security technologies and active
monitoring provide a sensible approach to the majority of today's Web service
securi... (more)
SOA Is Now a Business Imperative
Integration remains the number one IT priority; fully 60-70% of IT budgets
are dedicated to it. Web services makes integrations simpler and cheaper. It
makes B2B integrations practical. What businesses demand from a
service-oriented architecture (SOA) is dynamic integration capability. They
want rapid response to change, to competitors, to new business opportunities.
SOA built with Web services allows IT to build reusable business functions.
Truly reusable business functions create efficiency, modularity, and easier
integration. The functionality t... (more)
An up-to-date, comprehensive, and practical discussion of Web services
security, and the first to cover the final release of new standards SAML 1.1
and WS-Security. Comprehensive coverage and practical examples of the
industry standards XML Signature and XML Encryption will be presented as well
as the first book to cover the final WS-Security and SAML 1.1 specifications.
Aligning IT with Business Pragmatic Web Services Security Today The Critical
Need for Monitoring & Analysis An up-to-date, comprehensive, and practical
discussion of Web services security, and the first to cover t... (more)