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Wednesday December 12 2001 The Birth of the UDDI Value Added Service Supplier UDDI based Web Services Intermediaries In one of my previous articles I mentioned in some detail about the architecture surrounding Web Services. In retrospect I'd like to prove one of my points concerning value added services. The UDDI registry is undoubtedly the way forward for businesses today, however I've often been asked how do other independent directory sites such as www.salcentral.com and www.xmethods.com fit within the overall architecture. UDDI should be seen as an enormous warehouse full of products. If you go to a warehouse as a customer you are not actually interested in everything on the shelves, it would be far better to only visit areas which have products that you're interested in, for example books or CDs. A Value Addes Service Supplier (VASS) can give you as a customer searching abilities that are currently beyond the capabilities of UDDI. A VASS will allow you access to research that has been carried out on behalf of the industry. This enables you to select that "perfect supplier" or "Web Service" by using selective information such as historic research, validity of information, level of documentation, ease of use, etc. This effectively filters out the invalid entries and gives the user information that's been cleaned, validated, and researched. All too often we rely on simple categorization and the allocation of key words to select Web Services. The VASS, however, is an independent organization that offers the customer impartial advice allowing them to make informed judgments as to the correct supplier or Web Service to choose. The VASS Business Plan I believe that currently that UDDI has been misinterpreted as a one-stop shop (similar to a web search engine) for finding, selecting, and keeping track of Web Services and suppliers. This in our opinion is not the case. In fact the UDDI is more similar to a data storage device (database) that allows a Value Added Service Supplier to sit as a layer above this repository and act as an intermediary between the customer and UDDI by offering additional services that supplement and add value to UDDI. Customers may of course still interact with the UDDI registry directly but simply loose some of the additional services the VASS can supply. Below is a diagram to show some examples of Value Added Services:
Alerts Often as a customer you haven't just got one need for a business supplier, it's an ongoing requirement. An example of this would be always getting the cheapest quote for stationery. Alerts allow a VASS to email you when a supplier or Web Service is registered within the UDDI that meet the search requirements your interested in. By asking for an alert on "Stationery and New York", you will receive notifications every time a new stationery supplier joins the UDDI registry. This potentially allows you to get better quotes and lower prices. Even though I have mentioned here that Alerts are sent to the Customer via email, it is worth noting that this is only one type of method of providing this information for the customer. In fact other such notification methods could be:
Please note the use of running a pre-determined Web Service; this affectively allows a VASS to become part of a 'mission critical' solution for a customer. The ability to instantly notify you by actually changing the way your Web Service functions can be essential in situations of fallback and disaster recovery. Watching OK, you've found that perfect supplier, they give you access to the Web Service you've been looking for and at just the right price. You've got this feeling, however, in the pit of your stomach: what if the Web Service fails, what if the supplier moves, changes their tax reference, or a worse case simply changes or moves the Web Service? Along comes the VASS and allows you to nominate specific UDDI registry entries. Whether it's the organization or Web Service link you're interested in, the VASS will watch the UDDI entry on your behalf and email you automatically when it changes. Organizations are using UDDI as a repository for information to allow customers to find suppliers. Because UDDI is capable of containing technical information concerning a Web Service, however, this can be used by the VASS to poll that Web Service on a regular basis to make sure that it's available and working correctly. This regulated information can even be used to form part of the Service Level Agreement. Rating Ratings allow all the information that a VASS gathers (such as availability and research on a Web Service and organization) to be signified as a single value that denotes its overall performance and usefulness. This rating can then be used effectively by the customer within the search filter, to only select Web Services that have a good rating. As far as who rates a Web Service or UDDI registry entry, I expect a number of rating agencies to exist, however a number of factors will dictate their success:
Search Filter The UDDI registry is only as good as the data it contains. This statement is definitely justified and currently with over 48% of the registry containing invalid links, even now it makes searching for information within the registry difficult. The VASS can act as an independent filtering system, which only displays to the Customer the UDDI registry entries that are valid. It can do this by daily scanning through each UDDI registry entry and simply making a note of the key values (unique values per UDDI registry entry) that are valid and can be displayed within its own search area. In addition the VASS will allow additional advanced information searching which is dependant on information gathered from other resources such as Web Service Research (see below), Watching (see above), and Rating (see above). This will give the customer the ability to make a much more informed decision as to which supplier or Web Service to choose and also allow the customer to more closely scrutinize the fewer remaining suppliers. The VASS contacts new UDDI registry entries and asks the organization to complete a series of questionnaires. This means that first of all the VASS has validated that the organization mentioned in the UDDI registry actually exists (similar to how Verisign works today with digital certificates). It also means that the VASS can categorize UDDI registry entries as well as supplying potential customers with the ability to search on completed questionnaires. If a developer then wants to find a business, they can browse through independently verified information with the understanding that a degree of checking and validation has already been performed. For example, if a tax number is entered then the rating supplier can confirm with the country of origin that this tax number is registered to the organization named in the specified registry entry. Phone numbers, fax numbers, and email information can be also verified accordingly. Research VASS will independently research individual Web Services for suppliers. This will mean creating "In The Spotlight" type articles, which systematically give customers the low-down on specific Web Services. These articles will form a benchmark of how a Web Service performs, expected response times, availability, security, and disaster recovery. Along with historic information on how these values fluctuate, which may signify trends, we could ask for example is the availability of a Web Service constant throughout the day? Research will also be performed on suppliers to validate information already supplied within UDDI, such as telephone numbers, fax numbers, and company details. In addition extra information will be obtained which is not necessarily available within UDDI, such as company size, time the company has been trading, last years accounts, and directors names. The information contained within this research could also form the backbone to the Service Level Agreement (see SLA Contracts below). Access to this type of information also has the ability to form the basis for a degree of trust between the Customer and the Web Service Provider. This will significantly shorten the timeline for creating agreements, contractual or otherwise. SLA Contracts Frightening subject. A year or two ago when UDDI was still very much in its infancy I heard a rumor that consideration was being made towards including the ability to control Service Level Agreement Contracts within the UDDI registry. Something I believe which was eventually shied aware from once the impact of hundreds of claimants suing others about Web Service availability was discussed. It is, however, something for potentially a specialist VASS to consider, as the VASS is separated from the UDDI registry it can simply state that it administers and checks the SLA on behalf of each party. This maintenance of SLA Contracts will require a VASS to police a range of acceptable values that were agreed upon within the SLA. Once one of these values was crossed such as a response time becoming slower that the agreed limit, then all parties would be notified that the agreement has been broken. The difference between the VASS and an alert type system is that the VASS actually gets a signed copy of the original SLA and is responsible for setting up and controlling the rules within the SLA, they are then responsible for making sure that both parties are notified once these rules are breached. Notification will take the form of positive person-to-person interaction, not simply sending off an email message and hoping it arrives. UDDI Newsletter Newsletters from a VASS can offer an insight into the UDDI registry and also give a customer first hand and immediate knowledge of some of the following information on a weekly basis:
All the information included in the newsletter would also be tailored (like web sites do now) to subscriber's own particular tastes. For example some subscribers will only want to see rating and Web Services to do with a specific category, such as Hospitals or Car Showrooms. This is one of the few entries within this article that is already in existence; simply register your email address at http://www.salcentral.com/salnet/subscribe.htm for a weekly newsletter of new Web Services. Who Pays the VASS? The VASS has two potential revenue streams: The first is from the customer who wants to pay for value added information, but often the quantities of users will have to be high to sustain any type of profitable company. It is also notoriously difficult to create an Internet business from the ground up from customer subscriptions unless you already have a critical mass of visitors and are seen as the primary source of information. In addition this type of subscription type service often stifles growth and in turn then affects the following revenue stream I'd like to discuss. The second revenue stream is directly from the Web Service Providers. These providers will pay for research on their Web Services and also for specialist services such as using the alert system as part of an SLA contract between the provider and the customer. It does seem that as the UDDI registry grows and potentially becomes unsustainable, as a single search engine that the VASS who specialize in specific areas of the industry may well be able to secure themselves a loyal and more willing to pay customer base. For example, a customer based in the USA who is looking for a Web Service for sending SMS messages, would be far more willing to enter a contractual agreement with an American company than a UK company. The reason is simply that if your agreement does not span country borders then it is far easier to take legal action against a Web Service provider. If you enter into a commitment with a company in another country, however, then the legal costs alone will probably far out way any costs in lost income, due to a disruption in a Web Service. I believe that many VASS companies will in fact concentrate in country or industry specific information and therefore filter the Web Services and UDDI registry entries you see. Conclusion This article has come off the back of the data integrity research we've done on the UDDI registry and my own personal research into Brokerages using our www.salcentral.com platform. This joint research (SalCentral and WebServicesArchitect) is now publicly available at http://www.salcentral.com/uddi/default.asp. In our previous research its apparent that the UDDI is really simply a dumb registry, in many ways it simply forms the basis of the data storage of the millions of pieces of information. To make this information useful, however, someone (the VASS) needs to give the customer and Web Service provider an element of control. VASS are already starting to appear such as http://www.salcentral.com/ and http://www.xmethods.com/. I expect, however, that some may be better suited over the long term to tailor their efforts more towards a specific industry solution, such as a VASS for the Hotel trade, which concentrates on Hotel biased Web Services or a VASS for a specific country. This change in effort will only appear, however, when a critical mass of Web Services have appeared. What happens now is significant, with the expected increase in the registry. Customers and Web Service providers may in fact become disillusioned with the amount of data integrity and therefore the concern is that UDDI may in fact get a bad name for itself, something that can be difficult to shake off. In addition, some may have noticed the similarity between search engines and UDDI; in fact we may be seeing the birth of the next stage of search engines. This will potentially make existing search engines redundant and allow customers to search and select companies to trade with using specialist filtered lists rather than in that huge cloud called the Internet. In addition it seems that existing search engines may in fact be able to hook directly into the VASS search engine. Readers of this article may also be interested in
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