Your Next IT Strategy

Companies have traditionally viewed their information systems as proprietary. They buy or lease their own hardware, write or license their own applications, and hire big staffs to keep everything running. This approach has many flaws--it's cumbersome and expensive and hinders collaboration. But there's been no alternative. Until now. Today, we're seeing the emergence of an entirely new approach to corporate information systems: web services. Rather than own and maintain all of their own hardware and software, companies will soon buy their information technologies as services provided over the Internet. The authors guide executives through this new IT strategy, explaining what the web services architecture is, how it differs from traditional IT architecture, and why it will provide significant cost savings to businesses while creating new opportunities for growth. They lay out a step-by-step approach for adopting the new architecture. The experiences of companies such as Merrill Lynch, General Motors, and Dell Computer, which are already transitioning to the new architecture, offer three guidelines. First, build on your existing systems, connecting them to the web services architecture to gain immediate benefits. Second, start at the edges of your company, focusing on those applications that connect your organization to customers or other companies. Third, work with your partners to develop a shared terminology for your shared applications, coming to agreement, for example, on the precise meanings of XML terms. As the new architecture matures, the distinction between users and suppliers of web services will fade. The location of particular capabilities and applications will become less important than executives' ability to discover and orchestrate these capabilities to deliver greater value to customers.

• Information management
• Internet
• Partnerships
• IT management
• Information systems