In the Books

Can yet another vendor consortium deliver on a cross-industry B2B e-commerce standard?

In the Books

Can yet another vendor consortium deliver on a cross-industry B2B e-commerce standard?

IBM, Ariba, Microsoft, and nearly 40 other business-to-business (B2B) software companies announced in September a coalition dedicated to creating and maintaining an enormous online database of cross-industry products and services in an effort to accelerate global e-commerce.

The new initiative, dubbed the UDDI Project - for Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration - enjoys the support of companies ranging from Compaq, Dell Computer Corp., and Sun Microsystems to firms such as American Express, Merrill Lynch, and Andersen Consulting, as well as B2B vendors i2 Technologies Inc., SAP, and WebMethods.

According to the UDDI goals posted at www.uddi.org, the freshly minted B2B program seeks to establish a "sweeping" industry standard that will "create a platform-independent, open framework for describing services, discovering businesses, and integrating business services using the Internet." Coalition organizers hope that the UDDI standard will become "the building block that will enable businesses to find and transact with one another using their preferred applications."

"B2B eCommerce has seen rapid global adoption, but this success has been uneven as marketplaces, buyers, suppliers, and commerce service providers often must reinvent integration methodologies for their various trading partners," said Larry Mueller, president and COO at Ariba. "It's time for the industry to build on its early successes and collaborate on interoperability."

UDDI advocates said the standard is based on extensible markup language (XML), and HTTP and Domain Name System (DNS) protocols, and that UDDI also addresses cross-platform programming issues through its adoption of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messaging specifications found at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web site. UDDI is promoting the standard as an "open" one and invites any organization to participate by signing up in the forthcoming UDDI Business Registry.

UDDI hopes to transfer the registry specifications to an independent industry standards group by late 2001 or 2002. IBM, Ariba, and Microsoft plan to launch interoperable beta versions of the registry in fall 2000.

UDDI envisions the business registry as an XML Web directory containing standardized data and business rules posted by member companies to describe themselves and how they want to conduct e-commerce, including specifications about the type of transaction data and formats they can handle.

The information will be structured in three sections: white pages containing company descriptions, contact information, and business ID numbers; yellow pages with companies organized into business categories, such as products, geographic regions, and industry sectors; and green pages, which will provide transaction requirements. Other companies will be able to look up this information for free.

Because the registry is XML-based, theoretically the transacting companies could conduct e-business on a machine-to-machine or system-to-system level, according to UDDI members. The registry can also describe services implemented using HTML, Java, CORBA, Microsoft Windows DNA, and other programming models and languages.

Online trading community provider VerticalNet Inc. recently joined UDDI and plans to move its network of more than 120,000 suppliers, of which 8,000 have VerticalNet-hosted storefronts or e-commerce centers, into a UDDI-compliant registry. Blair LaCorte, VerticalNet senior e-commerce VP, said that UDDI "is the perfect complement to our supplier integration strategy which leverages internationally accepted standards to promote seamless trade between our members."

Industry observers said it's still too early to determine if this latest attempt to set e-commerce standards will be more successful than competing efforts from other vendors and organizations. The nonprofit OASIS standards consortium recently demonstrated its ebXML trading exchange in San Jose, Calif. ("Speaking in Tongues," News & Analysis, September 29, 2000), but hasn't gained much traction. A September 5 New York Times article noted that a similar e-commerce initiative, CommerceNet's eCo Framework Project, which already has a demo site at eco.commerce.net, has failed to generate much participation.

Analysts at Zona Research said that UDDI looks promising and that its integration of SOAP, CORBA, DNS, and other technologies distinguish it from rival e-commerce campaigns, such as Hewlett-Packard's eSpeak and Sun's Jini. However, Zona cautions that UDDI will still need buy-in from Oracle in order to become a true "mother tongue for e-business."

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