Recently in Emerging Technologies Category
Business managers serving on WCM product-selection teams or attending technology conferences sometimes ask for definitions of “Web services” and “service-oriented architecture (SOA).” They say they are confused by their IT teams’ usage of the terms as though they were synonymous, and that when the managers themselves use the terms interchangeably, they get corrected. Why does this happen?
Web services, a technology standard, and SOA, an architectural design methodology, are highly complementary. Yet they are distinct. “Web services” refers to technologies that allow enterprise applications of all kinds (WCM, CRM ERP, BI, etc.) to communicate with each other. Common forms of Web services include application programming interfaces (APIs), which are connectors written by software vendors that allow for a standard way of communicating with their applications. Vendors often publish or sell these APIs as a straightforward means of connecting. Another common – and more generic – example of a Web service is any message, often in XML format, exchanged between a client (a Web browser, for example) and a server (your bank’s database) using the SOAP protocol. There are variations on these two themes, but the important concept to remember about Web services is that, simply put, they allow for a standard means of communication between software applications which may or may not rely upon transmission over the Web. Web services very frequently communicate only over corporate networks.
SOA, on the other hand, is not a technology. Rather, it is a way of designing connections between objects (application code components), applications, and other technology infrastructure. Like the frame of a building with respect to its windows and floors, SOA only defines the relationships between technology components, not their composition. SOA’s goals are to achieve self-sufficiency for each component – i.e. that each component will perform one complete task or “service” – and for each component to offer its “service” to all of the others. It stands to reason then, that Web services and SOA often fit together well because SOA provides a framework within which discrete components can interact with each other, and Web services provide a standard way of building the components.
“Web 2.0” is a term that gets bandied about far too often with far too little associated meaning. Essentially, Web 2.0 refers to multi-directional interactivity between one or more humans and one or more Web applications (with their associated back-ends) -- period. The term often pops up in descriptions of any of the following: social computing, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, Web services, RSS feeds, online applications, collaboration, mash-ups and the Web as a platform. Don’t let the diversity of topics given as examples of Web 2.0 distract you from the fact that the key operative term is multi-directional communication. What does this mean for WCM?
For the end user, it means that Web applications such as online banking, which now rely heavily on technologies like Flash and AJAX, provide better customer service by building-in higher levels of interactivity between the user and the data within a browser session and by encouraging more efficient communication between the browser and the host. Whereas before, every user request meant a round-trip to the server, now far more data is sent at once to the browser, often in the form of an object with which the browser can interact. The user then manipulates the data multiple times – transferring funds between accounts, paying a bill, and updating an address, for example – and upon logging out, transactions are sent to the server all at once for processing. Because technologies like Flash and AJAX provide for easier inclusion of rich media in the user interface, the combined effect of these Web 2.0 technologies is reduced development time for programmers, a more satisfying user experience for consumers, server processing efficiency for the host, and bandwidth savings for everyone. Another significant advantage of Web 2.0 technologies for WCM is the tendency to be so highly based on well-defined standards that functional components of Web applications are often interchangeable. When built on Web 2.0 technologies, the “address update” function in the Web banking example above would likely be usable by the bank’s credit card Web application as well. This component swapability is the underlying principle behind enterprise mash-ups, a developer-oriented topic for an upcoming blog entry.
As consumer behavioral patterns across verticals (including retail, media and entertainment, and financial services) increasingly shift toward online channels, Web content must become increasingly monetizable. Factors which improve the monetizability of content relate primarily to rich user experiences, which require Web applications to combine behavioral analytics with the cross-platform, targeted delivery of digital media of all types (audio, video, streaming content, Flash, myriad image types), all available customer data, and content from Web services-based sources (maps, shipping information, weather reports, stock quotes, news). Not only must successful Web applications seamlessly wrap these components together behind the scenes, they must supply an interactive presentation layer that is aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-use. The primacy of the trend toward monetizable content will fuel other trends in the WCM space, among them, the heightened importance of:
* Design agencies as WCM solution providers. Vendors to watch: Blast Radius, Avenue A | Razorfish, Molecular.
* Analytics functionality within the WCM application to support multi-channel marketing campaigns. Vendors to watch: Interwoven, CrownPeak.
* The ability to incorporate rich media at the content creation stage. Vendors to watch: Adobe, ClearStory Systems, EMC/Documentum.
* Support for integrated search and advertising/merchandising. Vendors to watch: Endeca, FAST, Google.
* The emergence of WCM applications as primary brand managers. This is a channel strategy decision and is not vendor-oriented in nature.
