Web services and EAI can compliment each other.
Take, for instance, a consumer insurance rate quote process. Traditionally, a consumer would lug a Ma Bell yellow pages directory to the kitchen and select a company at random, then call and ask the agent for a quote. The agent would review company charts and supply the answer. If the consumer accepted, the agent would complete the appropriate forms and, at best, e-mail them to the company’s headquarters for processing.
In a sophisticated Web services example, a consumer Web searches “insurance companies” for auto insurance (“Yellow Pages”), submits driving details to XYZ Insurance, Inc. (“Send and Receive”), the Web service of XYZ Insurance interprets the information (“Read”), and the consumer receives a price quote in return (“Understand and Use”) and accepts or declines the offer.
The sophistication of the particular Web services, however, would depend on the type of integration deployed: external, internal or multi-channel.
External Application Integration
An external Web service/B2B application integration alters external business partner transactions. Business partners communicate transactions based upon agreed standard documents for each step in a business process, significantly reducing custom business processes. In addition, increased acceptance of Web and XML standards will diminish required data types and entry points for B2B collaboration. As a result, transaction efficiency will substantially increase.
Internal Application Integration
An internal Web services application can present a consistent view of business data over multiple applications through structured and controlled transactions that take mere seconds. As a result, Enterprise Systems will be exposed as a set of reusable Web services, consumed by composite business applications. These “opportunistic” applications will discover and reuse existing services and will rapidly deploy to meet specific business opportunities.
Multi-Channel Integration
Web services will facilitate the development and deployment of applications accessed by Web, mobile and office devices. Web services will permit application developers to better leverage existing business data and processes by invoking them as reusable services. Moreover, Web services development tools will reduce search complexities for existing services and help combine them into “composite business applications.” Finally, a multi-channel integration can retool existing applications across these different channels to adapt to business innovations.
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