Special to ZDNet
December 12, 2002, 5:38 AM PT
COMMENTARY--By now, virtually every company is fully aware and engaged in various stages of integrating the Internet into their business model to help serve customers better. A key part of every integration strategy is the use of Web services. The phenomenal growth of Web services is made possible by open standards that are built into the products that comprise the Web services infrastructure.
With a standards based infrastructure, companies can link applications and conduct B2B or B2C commerce regardless of the computing platforms and programming languages involved. In a way, Web services are the natural evolution of the Internet--again all based on open standards. At this point, Web services may seem pretty straightforward, but a critical issue companies face is choosing the best enterprise/strategic development platform for creating and deploying these new interoperable applications....