Improving Customer Experience Using Web Services

BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 1 • January 2004 63

Improving customer experience using Web Services

T Stevens and A May

This paper looks at some of the advances in open standards for interfacing and interoperability and how they can be utilisedto improve the customer experience when contacting suppliers, in particular, the use of XML/HTTP Web Services to improvethe quality of the interaction. It describes in depth a solution developed by the authors to use Web Services to interface bothwithin the enterprise and across the Internet with partners to enhance the BT ADSL pre-registration scheme.

1. IntroductionWeb Services, particularly the XML building blockstandards SOAP (simple object access protocol), WSDL(Web Services description language) and UDDI(universal description, discovery and integration),together make a suite of tools that allows applicationmethods and data to be self-describing (WSDL),discoverable (UDDI) and usable (SOAP).

These standards allow enterprises to link their legacysystems with developments on newer platforms, tointerface with partners and provide better service tocustomers. Application service providers (ASPs) canthen expose their applications with ease. Not only doesthis provide a better service to customers, but with largeorganisations it is not uncommon that complex systemsexist, and, in the past, developing interfaces to supportnew products had not only been costly but timeconsuming. The cost is to both provider and customeras any development costs incurred would need to be

passed on to ensure profitability. Also the inability todeliver the solution quickly could mean that competitiveadvantage is lost. Figure 1 shows that a reduction intime spent developing interfaces, using a commonstandard, will reduce development time significantly,thus allowing the product to be launched in the bestwindow of opportunity.

By choosing Web Services as the interface, thedesign stage is shortened, as the vocabulary with whichto transfer data, if not the data itself, is already defined.Also development is often accelerated, as, once theWSDL file is defined, and therefore the interface,software construction can begin for the consumer of theservice potentially before the service is built by thesupplier.

BT Wholesale provides network products to largecustomers, and currently delivers them using a widevariety of platforms, both legacy and new, leading to

Fig 1 How the use of Web Services reduces development time.

design development interface development

design development interface development

design development

design development

BT

ISP

BT

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solution with bespoke interfaces

solution with Web Services interface

reduction in timeto market

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BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 1 • January 200464

complex operational support systems (OSS). Indeed theoverall aim of the business is to provide a clear strategicpath for product introduction and changes bydeveloping a single integrated OSS solution thataccelerates development lead times, reduces costs andsupports customers by providing a flexible interface thatis easily consumed.

The ability to bring products to market faster is onlyone of the problems facing enterprises. The Internet andadvances in bandwidth have brought about aninformation society where customers now expect toextract data with ever-increasing speeds and to accessservices in a simple fashion. A customer placing anorder over the Internet wants security in the firstinstance followed by the ability to easily track progressof that order through to completion. For those Internetenterprises selling goods on-line, this could involveclient authentication in a user directory, orderpreparation by a Web tool, order processing andtracking on fulfilment systems, payment processing,and data warehousing. Providing accurate MIS andreporting is essential, giving both the customer andmanagement valid and current information easily. Largecomplex solutions, with many systems and multi-tudinous interfaces require significant develop-ment,and a single standard for these interfaces will allowtimely deployments at an affordable cost to theenterprise. Indeed when application designers sit downat the whiteboard, and design interfaces betweensystems, it would seem that Web Services are now oftenthe preferred option for all but true real-time messagingrequirements. As standards in security and businessprocess are developed, these could soon become the defacto interface of choice.

2. Satisfying the demanding customerAs the Web Services standards mature, and a greaterproliferation of services evolves, the main driver for WebServices will move from within enterprise boundaries.Individuals are likely to become the larger customerbase for Web Services, though often they will beunaware of the technologies involved. An individual nowhas greater access to information than at any previoustime — indeed the amount of digital informationproduced every year is estimated at two exabytes, or2 × 1018 bytes. They are becoming increasingly at easeat performing routine activities over the Internet usingmany devices, from PCs and mobile telephones, toInternet fridges and other ‘smart’, network-enableddevices. Indeed, despite much scaremongering and badpress, it seems users’ level of trust in the security oftheir transactions is increasing, especially as govern-ments, banks, utilities and the private sector oftenpromote digital interaction with their customers overother channels — not surprising given the drastic costsavings. We can also observe the large players in

consumer software publicly and repeatedly puttingsecurity to the top of their agenda, as can be seen withMicrosoft’s ‘Trustworthy Computing’ initiative. Thesetrends will inevitably lead to consumers requiring morefunctionality from their connected devices. They willenlist the support of software agents to completeregular and ad hoc tasks, perhaps using Semantic Webtechnologies [1]. Applications supplied by multiplevendors will be required to interact in increasinglycomplex consumer-designed transactions, potentiallyunique to an individual. Users will glue services togetherto create meta-agents, suitable for their lifestyles andinterests. Indeed, one can envisage Web Servicesbrokers appearing in the market-place who write nocode — or just that necessary for utilising servicesprovided by other organisations. This is made possibleby the use of self-defining and self-describing WebServices, delivered using universally acceptedstandards.

For example Amazon offers a complete XML WebService interface to many parts of their system [2].Developers have been creating applications that utilisethis service to provide tools that enhance the user’sinteraction with their media libraries, by enabling themto source data from Amazon on their favourite musicartists, the film industry, etc. It may be that the clientapplication has a ‘buy now’ button when recommendingfurther items based on the user’s preferences. This thenprovides Amazon with a highly granular, cascadingmarketing tool that they do not even have to budget forin the traditional manner. Simply by exposing theirenterprise applications over the Internet through a WebServices interface, a whole network of Amazon resellershas appeared. These then take a small percentage ofthe sale profit when a user buys through their software.No doubt the small cut into the profit margin is less thanthe saving made by Amazon through the knock-onreduction to marketing budgets, and therefore holdsthe potential to increase their revenues, and theirchannels to market. A software tool that interfaces toAmazon could at the same time perform a search usinga third-party search engine, such as Google [3]; usingtheir Web Services API provides enriched information tothe end user.

We can see that already the commercial landscapein terms of application integration and service-orientedarchitecture is changing, and that Web Services,available across the Internet, are proliferating. Further,as basic economics insist that service providers andenterprises reduce cost in order to remain profitable andcompetitive, it is key that the customer experience isenhanced, while the method and cost of communicationis reduced. Enterprises who wish to move forward in theglobal market-place need to embrace Web Services asthe de facto standard with which to integrate their



customers into a distributed network-centric enterprise.The use of these standards also provides theopportunity to ensure that the customer experience istailored to provide each individual with the best possibleinteraction.

3. Web Services and BT’s ADSL pre-registration scheme

The telecommunications market-place in terms ofproducts has changed dramatically in recent years, withthe pressure now to deliver new and innovative productsfit for purpose in very short time-scales in order to meetrapidly changing market and commercial needs. In April2002 BT decided to accelerate the roll-out of ADSL(asymmetric digital subscriber line) access technologiesby gauging end-user demand in areas that were not yetenabled. Due to the regulatory framework within whichBT operates, it was not possible for BT Wholesale to pollfor public opinion, as it is required that they do notsupply direct to the end users. All the pre-registrationswere to be collected by Internet service providers (ISPs),including those parts of BT that could retail thebroadband connections (BT Retail, BT Openworld, andBT Global Services), and to forward the interest to BTWholesale, who would then be able to deploy thenetwork in a demand-based fashion.

A new system was urgently required to support this— only two months was allowed to complete thedevelopment life cycle, from requirements capture todelivery. As the project was developed so fast it wascritical that flexibility for future enhancements and easeof use for the scheme’s customers was incorporated intothe design from the beginning. The priority then wasnot only rapid development and deployment but alsothe ease with which the ISPs could interface to the pre-registration database, known as FastPRoBE. In order to

support the rapid application development (RAD)requirements, the application was developed using theMicrosoft .Net Framework, and an SQL Server 2000database. With a large population of users and differingclient technologies three methods were needed forservice providers to interface to FastPRoBE — simpleWeb pages for direct entry, a bulk upload facility using aflat file, and an API for ISP systems to interface directwith FastPRoBE. Web Services were chosen for the APIas their promise of flexibility, rapid development,common standards and ease of deployment tied in withthe need to work fast. Indeed the Web Services arehosted on the same server, with the same firewall andsecurity rules as the Web pages. This meant that therewas a reduction in capital outlay, as the single Webserver could host both Web pages and Web Services.Due to the financial risk exposure of broadband-enabling an exchange, all the data collected was to bemanually validated within BT Wholesale. Hence thesecurity wrap on the Web Services was minimal, using asimple, clear, text user-id and password combinationover HTTP within the body of the SOAP envelope, ascan be seen in the example SOAP request/response pairin Figs 2 and 3.

It is accepted that this very basic level ofauthentication is not suitable for many other scenarios,and that most solutions will require a much bettersecurity layer. Developments such as WS-Security willhopefully offer stronger authentication within thestandards suite [4].

From the customers’ perspective the pre-registration scheme was an unqualified success. Theintroduction of the registration scheme created anexciting partnership between BT Wholesale and the ISPswho would capture customers’ interest, offering a

Fig 2 The request from the ISP.

POST /WebServices/FastPROBEWebServices.asmx HTTP/1.1Host: 62.239.x.xContent-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8Content-Length: lengthSOAPAction:“http://62.239.x.x/CreateSinglePreRegAndGetTriggerLevels”

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“utf-8”?><soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance” xmlns:xsd=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema”xmlns:soap=“http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/”><soap:Body>

<CreateSinglePreRegAndGetTriggerLevels xmlns=“http://62.239.21.52”><OMNumber>string</OMNumber><Password>string</Password><Telephone>string</Telephone><Postcode>string</Postcode><Product>string</Product>

</CreateSinglePreRegAndGetTriggerLevels></soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>



collaborative framework with which to increase thespeed of broadband roll-out and expand the totalmarket size, but in a controlled and cost-effective wayby ensuring that supply was demand led. In the past BTwould base decisions on exchanges for inclusion into thenational roll-out programme by applying analysis onexisting Internet traffic via dial-up services to assist indetermining potential broadband end users. The use ofthe pre-registration scheme allowed BT Wholesale forthe first time to capture interest from the potential endusers, via an ISP, thereby providing a more accuratebarometer of interest on an exchange-by-exchangebasis, and accelerating build when the registeredvolumes met viability thresholds. The original scope wasto capture registrations and where interest levels weresufficient BT Wholesale would build the exchange. Forthe year from April 2002 through to March 2003 thetarget was 102 exchanges to be enabled through thescheme, but the success of the scheme resulted in 214exchanges being enabled. This is in part attributable tothe take-up of the Web Services.

Indeed at the time of writing, during 2003, a total of912 exchanges have been enabled, and 451 are in thebuild programme. It is expected that by March 2004 thescheme’s success shall be such that the number ofenabled exchanges more than doubles the initialforecast. Figure 4 shows the take-up of pre-registrationsand how they contribute to the overall volume of

exchanges being broadband-enabled. As demonstratedthe pre-registration scheme is driving the increase inenabled exchanges in the UK. Also circa 468 000 uniquecustomers have registered interest, with 107 000having been provided service under the scheme to date.

Figure 5 shows the proportion of pre-registrationscaptured using the Web Services, against the otheravailable interfaces.

Fig 3 The response from FastPRoBE.

HTTP/1.1 200 OKContent-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8Content-Length: length

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“utf-8”?><soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance” xmlns:xsd=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema”xmlns:soap=“http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/”><soap:Body><CreateSinglePreRegAndGetTriggerLevelsResponse xmlns=“http://62.239.21.52”>

<CreateSinglePreRegAndGetTriggerLevelsResult><Telephone>string</Telephone><Postcode>string</Postcode><Product>string</Product><OLOCode>string</OLOCode><ExchangeName>string</ExchangeName><ExchangeStatus>string</ExchangeStatus><RateAdaptiveRAG>string</RateAdaptiveRAG><FixedRateRAG>string</FixedRateRAG><IncludedInCount>boolean</IncludedInCount><EndUserDuplicates>int</EndUserDuplicates><TriggerLevel>int</TriggerLevel>

<SPPreRegistrationCountAtExchange>int</SPPreRegistrationCountAtExchange><ExchangeDuplicates>int</ExchangeDuplicates>

<IncludedPreRegistrationsAtExchange>int</IncludedPreRegistrationsAtExchange><ErrorMessage>string</ErrorMessage>

</CreateSinglePreRegAndGetTriggerLevelsResult></CreateSinglePreRegAndGetTriggerLevelsResponse>

</soap:Body></soap:Envelope>

Fig 4 How the take-up of pre-registrations contributes to the overall volume of broadband-enabled exchanges.

2001/02 2002/03 2003/04

exchange enabled

enabled by pre-registration

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The graph in Fig 5 shows that as time progressesmore and more of the ISPs are moving towards usingWeb Services as their choice of interface to FastPRoBE,largely moving away from using flat files for bulk upload.This enables them to interface synchronously, meaningthat their end user can be confident when registering onthe ISP Web site that BT Wholesale has received theirinterest. There was therefore a need to pushregistration data to the bt.com site. In this instance anative SQL server to SQL server link of back-enddatabases was the fastest to deploy. Later on came arequirement to link FastPRoBE to a MapInfo GIS appli-cation, used by BT’s Government department amongothers, to indicate ADSL roll-out geographically. Thedatabase logic for the previous link was reused, but thistime exposed through a Web Services interface. WitheCommerce and broadband roll-out making their pres-ence known on the political agenda, this is a valuabletool for quickly amalgamating and presenting data.

FastPRoBE also offers service providers various otherWeb Services, including some MIS, and the ability toedit/delete an already placed Web Service, making itpossible for ISPs to completely integrate FastPRoBE.The total number of Web Service hits that FastPRoBEhas taken is nearly 20 million from July 2002 toDecember 2002. This does not include calls that havebeen made to the stub service that is supplied to serviceproviders to allow them to test against an identical BTWholesale interface.

Despite all the pre-registration success, not allwithin BT was perfect. Even with the manual checksdone on the data, when exchanges were enabled andISPs began to contact those who had pre-registered toactually sell them a product, it was discovered that onmany occasions dedicated individuals had performed‘phone book’ type registrations, known as ‘phooking’,thus triggering exchanges into the build process. It isextremely important to BT Wholesale that the pre-

registered demand materialises once the exchangebuild has been completed in order for the scheme to beviable with the minimum risk. ISPs also requireconfidence that the customers they are capturing aregenuine, both in terms of cost but also to support anydirect marketing they may consider. Hencedevelopment was done on the system to validate thatthe user pre-registering for ADSL was the owner of thetelephone line being registered. This involvedconnecting FastPRoBE to BTs largest legacy system —CSS (customer services system), an IBM mainframe, tovalidate the pre-registration. Infrastructure develop-ments were already in place to expose CSS through WebServices, and so it was clear that, as FastPRoBE was aWeb Services-enabled application, developed using theMicrosoft .Net Framework, this was the only sensibleintegration method. This led to FastPROBE being thefirst RAD project to consume CSS Web Services [5].

All these developments give a total system archi-tecture for FastPRoBE as shown in Fig 6.

As the evolution of the global market-placeaccelerates, there is more need than ever for solutionsthat can allow those who develop products to deploythese to the market-place in short time-scales. Giventhe current economic climate, a quick-win for return oninvestment becomes even more critical. Within the pre-registration scheme, Web Services have proved to beeffective in allowing our customers to interact with oursystems very quickly, and with few technologicalhurdles. In the past this interfacing would have takenconsiderable time to develop and communicate. Tophase product launches, a long, costly strategicdevelopment focusing on maximising automation onOSS would be started, while in parallel a short-to-medium-term fix upon tactical solutions would bedeployed. Historically the tactical developments havebeen manually intensive, incurring higher operational

Fig 5 The proportion of pre-registrations captured using Web Services, against other available interfaces.

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cost to the business, but seen as a necessary stop-gapto satisfy demand while further automation on thestrategic systems is delivered. In many cases theautomation would provide improvements to all parts ofthe order life cycle (order capture, order managementand data warehousing) and also provide scalability inorder to support larger volumes of orders and customerinteraction. As interfaces improve, based on WebServices, there will be more opportunities forautomation and scalability and this lends itself to theinitial tactical solution being enhanced, and chosen asthe final deployed offering, thereby providing an evenbetter return on investment. It is clear that using WebServices can provide convergence between tactical andstrategic development by interface reuse. Indeedalthough there are initiatives to reduce the complexityof OSS, as Web Services enable many systems tointeract with others it is possible to take existing OSSelements, and develop Web Services interfaces — and

so the separation between the components becomesless critical as gluing them together becomes easier [5].

4. Web Services — futuresRapid advances in current technological capability thatwill contribute to the growing need for Web Servicesinclude the proliferation of wireless connectivity, with‘hot-spots’ springing up in places such as cafés, pubs,and railway stations — with these sometimes beingdeployed just as marketing tools. Wireless LANscomplemented with 2.5G and 3G mobile telephones,mean that wireless network connectivity is rapidlybecoming available to the majority.

Mobile telephones themselves are becomingincreasingly capable, with research developmentpromising massive advances in storage, perhaps usingphotonics or nanotechnology, enabling very smalldevices to hold enormous amounts of data. Indeed by

Fig 6 The FastPRoBE architecture.

Internet

FastPRoBE Web ServerASP .Net Web ServicesASP .Net Web pages

demilitarised zone

ADSL Web checker

demilitarised zone

ISPs

bt.com databaseserver

MapInfoGIS server

FastPRoBE database andinternal Web server

BT corporate informationnetwork

Microsoft SQL serverASP .Net Web ServicesASP .Net Web pages

VB .Net background servicesWS proxy

CSS



analysing past growth in storage rates and then byextrapolating, we can conclude that within the next 15years we will be able to carry a mobile telephone-sizedevice with enough storage to hold our entire lives invideo, encoded at 512 kbit/s. Prototype holographicscreens have been built, that respond to gestures usingmotion sensors; eventually this could enable smallmobile devices to provide vastly richer humaninterfaces. Customers will demand a great deal of thesedevices, and will only be prepared for services that areaffordable, desirable, secure, and straightforward. Anenterprise already has to be adaptable to thecustomers’ needs when communicating using non-verbal methods; they must ensure that the nature ofthat communication satisfies the customer and,importantly, also the shareholders. It would seem thatWeb Services will be a significant factor in achievingthese aims.

Developments such as the Semantic Web [1] aredestined to improve the customers’ satisfaction in theirinteraction with the Internet when looking forinformation and services. The Semantic Webdevelopment effort has been focusing on defining,storing and querying languages, such as RDF, that canbe used to describe these objects so that this type ofsearching becomes possible. There are now a number oftools designed for querying RDF and RSS feeds,commonly based either on SQL or X-Path, and these willcomplement and potentially supersede UDDI, as ameans of service discovery.

We can also observe ‘client’ network devicesincreasingly being required to talk to each other, andinteract in complex transactions without the support ofa server. Peer-to-peer networks are proliferating, informs such as chat rooms, file-sharing networks and

distributed computing grids. The client/servercomputing model, with its many points of failure, isbeing complemented by networks that, due to theirfragmented nature, are more sustainable. Web Servicesstandards are emerging that embrace peer-to-peernetworks. Most notable in the field is Project JXTA(Juxtapose), a development led largely by Sun, but withmany thousands in the development community.Project JXTA is a set of simple, XML peer-to-peerprotocols, some analogous with Web Services standardsthat enable any device on the network to communicate,collaborate, and share resources. Reliability andresilience is created by making each member asinterchangeable as possible. The JXTA architecture canbe represented as shown in Fig 7.

The JXTA core supports a basic set of protocols,sufficient for finding peers, services, and other objectswithin the network. These protocols also support theability to route messages across peers in a mesh-likenet. The protocols include:

• peer discovery protocol — this protocol enables apeer to find other peers, peer groups and‘advertisements’ which may describe services,

• peer resolver protocol — this protocol enables apeer to send and receive generic queries to find orsearch for peers, peer groups, pipes, and otherinformation,

• peer information protocol — this protocol allows apeer to learn about other peers’ capabilities andstatus, e.g. one could send a ping message to see ifa peer is alive,

• rendezvous protocol — this protocol allows a peerto propagate a message within the scope of a peergroup, which means that each peer within the

Fig 7 The JXTA architecture.

JXTA community applicationsSun JXTA

applications

JXTA community servicesSun JXTAservices

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group can communicate to another withoutnecessarily having a direct route to it, withmessages hopping between peers,

• end-point routing protocol — this protocol allows apeer to ask a peer router for available routes forsending a message to a destination peer.

Peers create a virtual, ad hoc network on top ofexisting networks, hiding possible underlyingcomplexity. In fact, Project JXTA does not limit itself tothe Internet, as the same XML standards are portableacross any network protocol. As such, JXTA is not a true‘Web Services’ technology, but there is a great deal ofcommonality between the XML protocols. In the JXTAvirtual network, any peer can interact with other peers,regardless of location, type of device, or operatingenvironment — even when some peers and resourcesare located behind firewalls or are on different networktransports. Thus devices on the periphery of thenetwork are included in the peer-to-peer network.Significant work has been undertaken by the ProjectJXTA development team to ensure that there are hookswithin the JXTA protocol for (Web) Servicesinstantiation. It should be noted, however, that JXTA isdesigned just for peer-to-peer communications, andmaintenance of that network, and has been designed insuch a way that many other technologies, includingWeb Services, cryptography, and others, can be utilisedwithin its framework. Indeed there are teams working onstandardising the mechanisms for this, and one areabeing looked at is that of SOAP invocation over a JXTAnetwork.

With a portable device capable of supporting anumber of network service protocols, a whole world ofpossibilities, and indeed markets, is opened up.Consider for example a dating service, designed tomatch up an individual with a potential partner. Theperson’s profile is entered on a database. Their portabledevice is then programmed to proactively hunt outcompatible people at specific times, provided they arein a similar location. This would need some kind oflocalisation service, so that the device is geographicallyaware of where it is; this could be achieved using GPS ortriangulation between cells in a cellular network. Thenat predetermined times the software could eitheradvertise the user’s profile and availability either over apeer network, or using Web Services and serverprocessing. Then, when a match is found, a ‘chat’ couldbe started with both parties anonymously decidingfurther on compatibility, and if appropriate, to go onand organise a meeting. At this point it may bedesirable to book a restaurant and taxis, and, bearing inmind that this could be in an unfamiliar location,semantic searching for Web Services could make thisprocess much easier. A software vendor who chose to

market such a tool could strike up commercialpartnerships with restaurants, etc, or indeed withanother application service provider who providesdirectories of eating and drinking establishments. Ifthese were exposed through Web Services, then thisbecomes increasingly straightforward for the softwarevendor, and is likely to provide a more integratedexperience to the end user.

5. ConclusionsWeb Services are already being used, and are even nowchanging the way in which enterprises communicateboth internally and with partners. It may not be longuntil interaction by individuals with the enterprise alsoconsists largely of Web Services transactions. To survivein such a cost-conscious, but technology-demandingmarket-place involves making difficult decisions when itcomes to deciding company IT strategy. Appearancesare that using Web Services benefits all parties involvedin the supply and consumption of data-based products,and indeed in B2B communications generally, and soindustry should prepare for a future in which UDDI,WSDL and SOAP become ubiquitous in serviceinvocation and data sharing. Although there are stillmany hurdles to overcome in terms of security, and veryfew payload standards, streaming and transactionalACIDic (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable)features, with the large amount of effort being exertedin these areas, it is probable that Web Services are hereto stay. With (albeit competing) standards just aroundthe corner for workflow (BPEL4WS, WSIC), and security(WS-SEC, XKMS, SAML, WS-Policy, WS-Trust), it seemsthat, so long as the standards level out, implementationof Web Services will only increase.

So the convergent ICT industry needs to ensure thatthe networks and solutions they supply are geared toproviding the best possible wrap for developing, testing,deploying and supporting Web Services for partners andthemselves. BT’s Web Service Management Layer, withits additional security layer(s), management networkand support wrap is an example of the kind of productthat is sorely needed, from a trusted security supplier[6].

Indeed BT itself is a very active mover in the WebServices sphere. Although as an enterprise it is weigheddown by legacy systems, with numerous interfaces tolarge numbers of suppliers and customers, considerableeffort is being put into Web Services, with significantwork being done in applications integration, both withinthe enterprise and with customers. Large customergateways are being Web Services-enabled. ICTdevelopment now often includes Web Services.Internally, design methodology is changing towards theconcept of loosely coupled services, rather than tightlyintegrated servers.



As demonstrated throughout this paper the use ofWeb Services is becoming key to business, especially inthe current economic climate as their use can reducecosts and assist in both winning new business andmaintaining existing market share. Allowing productsto be brought to market at the right time, enhancingthe customer experience, providing timely information(both internally and externally) and allowingcollaborative partnerships to be created with ease, allcontribute to the sum of benefits that Web Services canprovide.

In a regulated market BT Wholesale has found that,with the FastPRoBE application, using Web Services hasallowed solutions to be made accessible to smallercustomers as well as global enterprises, thus levellingthe B2B playing field. Not only does this satisfy anyregulatory requirements, but it also provides emergingenterprises with the confidence that BT Wholesale hassupplied and will continue to deliver quick solutions totheir interfacing needs, thereby allowing them tocompete in the market and increase broadband volumesin the UK.

References1 Davies N J et al: ‘The future of Web Services’, BT Technol J, 22,

No 1, pp 118—130 (January 2004).

2 Amazon — http://www.amazon.com/gp/aws/landing.html

3 Google — http://www.google.com/apis/

4 Kearney P et al: ‘An overview of Web Services security’, BTTechnol J, 22, No 1, pp 27—42 (January 2004).

5 Calladine J: ‘Giving legs to the legacy — integration within theenterprise’, BT Technol J, 22, No 1, pp 87—98 (January 2004).

6 Hill J R: ‘A management platform for commercial Web Services’,BT Technol J, 22, No 1, pp 52—62 (January 2004).

Tim Stevens’ work with BT began in 2000,when he was brought in to work on thedeployment of broadband by BTWholesale, through delivery of tacticalsolutions.

He works on rapid applicationdevelopment, and leads technical designin this field across a large team with a widediversity of skills.

His work in BT Exact currently includes theroll-out of Microsoft.Net, Web Servicesintegration and the design of B2B

gateways.

He has been running his own IT consultancy in software, networks andsecurity since 1995. Among his client list are blue chips from retail,banking and telecommunications.

Adrian May joined BT in 1987 and hasundertaken a wide variety of roles innetworks, software integration, projectand product management.

He was previously the productdevelopment manager responsible for BTWholesale Broadband cross-portfolioactivities which included delivery of thepre-registration scheme, prior to hispresent position in BT Retail InternetAccess where he is head of productimplementation for emerging broadbandaccess products.

His current work involves trials and implementation of broadbandproducts, such as wireless, satellite and symmetric services.

Documents

Improving Customer Experience Using Web Services