So What Is Microsoft .NET?

Microsoft .NET is a software platform comprising:

• applications which help increase revenue and drive down costs
• software to create and maintain systems that are more reliable, robust and secure
• developer tools to build reusable code, faster
• software that delivers better and more user-friendly applications for the end user and on a variety of devices.

The Business Decision: Why .NET?

Electronic communications can improve almost any business process by automating the interaction between applications. But existing methods of electronic communication like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) are complex and expensive to implement. By using the Internet to enable software applications to more easily work together, Microsoft .NET offers businesses the opportunity to implement electronic communication between applications quickly, easily and using open standards that allow a wide range of platforms and applications to communicate. Doing so opens the door to increased operating profits, decreased costs, and better connections with customers and employees.

Lower Operating Costs

The ability to connect systems can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line for any business, whether it needs to connect a handful of internal applications or integrate an extensive supply chain. Traditional business integration methods often do not work well when dealing with smaller suppliers and partners who frequently use isolated computer systems and communicate via fax, phone, and email. Microsoft .NET connected software can help bridge the communication gap among smaller partners.

Drive More Sales

By enabling electronic communications, .NET can automate sales between connected companies. It can also connect sales professionals with the information they need to make more sales in the field. Information that was once isolated in back end systems can now be accessed in the field through familiar programs such as Microsoft Office XP and a wide range of new smart devices, from smart phones to PCs.

Integrate Better with Customers

Increasing revenue can be a tough challenge for any company. The way most businesses do it is by finding more customers, providing better customer service, and selling more to existing customers. .NET can help companies meet this challenge by enabling them to more easily integrate services and applications. Connected back-end systems provide businesses with the opportunity to combine information and more easily assist customers - whether in a call centre setting or in an online Help application. As a result a company can turn quality of service into a competitive advantage.

Lower IT Costs

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework empower developers to quickly and easily create cutting-edge XML Web services and applications, building on their existing skill sets. The tools are language agnostic - developers coding in different languages can all contribute different parts to the same application, freeing developers to use the programming language of their choice in building XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET therefore helps alleviate one of the greatest scarcities in the world: skilled programmers, allowing an enterprise to tap the broadest developer talent pool, take advantage of existing skills, and let people use the language most appropriate for a specific task.

How to Move Toward a .NET Future

Everything you need to build, host and deploy .NET connected software is available. Here's how you can move towards a world where all of your company's computer systems are highly integrated and ready to help improve your business:

• Learn more about XML Web services, the underpinning of .NET technology. See how both XML Web services and .NET can help to make businesses more profitable
• Discuss your company's XML Web services strategy with your IT department and see how .NET has already helped companies improve their profitability
• Meet with a consultant who specialises in .NET connected software and explore the impact it can have on your business. Microsoft New Zealand has more than 300 certified partners who can offer you best-of-breed solutions that will not tie your company to one vendor
• Deploy pilot projects using XML Web services to take the first step toward connecting more closely with customers, partners, and employees
• Recommend that all future software purchases be based upon XML Web service technology to ensure interoperability and long-term value.

XML Web Services

The challenge for New Zealand businesses and organisations is to achieve global competitiveness, then sustain it in an increasingly dynamic marketplace governed by rapidly-shifting international agreements. One way New Zealand enterprises can succeed in this environment is changing the way they share information among themselves, their customers and trading partners. This article explains how a relatively new technology known as XML Web services will assist New Zealand organisations to succeed in this environment.

What is an XML Web Service?

XML Web services are software components that allow communication between different computers using Internet standards. This set of standards enables completely different applications to share information and work together over the Internet. Intuitively, a Web service is like a Web site without a user interface that serves programmes instead of people. For developers, the Web services model is simply the logical next step in the evolution of inter-application communication protocols. Such protocols allow applications to find each other, to figure out how to interface with one another, to initiate contact, and to exchange information.

As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explains, "I liken Web services to the original Windows challenge. Windows made it possible for applications to share screens, and to pass information back and forth. The Web services model is what's going to make it easy for tomorrow's applications to do the same thing over the Internet."

How does a Web Service Differ from the Internet?
The Internet is simply a data pipe and today it is used predominantly for machine-to human communications, such as e-mail, instant messaging or browsing Web sites.  The potential for the Internet to carry machine-to-machine communications has not been largely realised. Microsoft, along with many others in the industry, believes that connecting machines and the applications they run across the Internet will significantly enhance the ability of businesses to work together with their partners, suppliers, and customers.

As the Internet becomes a more reliable and secure communications infrastructure, it is expected to evolve into a general 'communications bus' for applications running across geographically distributed machines. With the assistance of other software vendors such as IBM, Microsoft aims to speed this vision along by helping to define and promulgate a programming model for integration via the Internet. The model, based on Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) protocol standards, is generally known throughout the industry as simply 'Web services'.

Why Web Services?

Until now, businesses that wished to share data using the Internet were frustrated by a lack of interoperability standards. This lack made it complex and expensive to develop and implement data sharing over the Internet. Yet, increasingly customers and trusted partners want to engage with businesses and government agencies in a more dynamic manner, from multiple locations and using a variety of devices. Information is being requested in more forms by more people and in more volumes than ever before. There was no way to make this kind of interaction possible using the available standards.

The Potential of Web Services

According to Gartner (Dion Wiggins, November 2002) Web services are simple in nature and timely in their emergence and they will drive the next software evolution, succeeding in areas where earlier technologies have failed. Wiggins said at the Gartner Symposium IT Xpo in Sydney in November 2002, that Web services "can provide some very real benefits - given appropriate use. The winners in Web services will be service providers that define the value that Web services bring to them (in providing efficiency, agility and a richer set of choices for doing business.)" The overriding conclusion from Gartner is that enterprises that delay adoption of Web services architecture risk falling behind their competition within three years and most mainstream enterprises should begin experimenting with Web services architecture now.

The Next Generation

Much of the early experimentation and deployment of Web services has been behind the firewall predominantly due to uncertainty about the acceptance and reliability of Web services. Microsoft has taken a leading role in acknowledging these concerns and pushing for the next generation of standards to be made available. Known within Microsoft as GXA or Global XML Web services Architecture, this second generation of Web services is finding new levels of comfort for local banking and financial institutions and government agencies where the desire for Web services in front of the firewall is attractive.

Recommendation

• Do not wait until everything is finalised. Start now with SOAP and WSDL. Track other standards as appropriate
• Evaluate your vendor's Web services strategy. If it does not have one, consider another vendor. Evaluate its support of Web services standards; don't take its word for it.
• Do not expect Web services to transform your business. Use Web services to transform your processes.
• Gain experience with these technologies and standards on internal projects now but then look for opportunities to use them externally.
• Experiment with some existing third-party Web services to gain experience. Leverage this experience to innovate and create your own Web services.

April 2003