The next big thing?
The article discusses the potential for a computing infrastructure using supply systems. Firms will outsource their computing to specialists (IBM, HP, etc) and pay for it as they use it, just as they now pay for their electricity, gas and water. This vision will rely on two unglamorous technologies....
| Publicado en: | Economist Vol. 370; no. 8358; pp. 51 - 53 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Economist Newspaper Limited
1/17/2004
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=11986288&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 11986288 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00130613 ECO jtl: Economist issn: 00130613 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 1/17/2004 vid: 370 iid: 8358 pid: 161 pub: Economist Newspaper Limited artinfo: ui: 11986288 ppf: 51 ppct: 2 formats: tig: atl: The next big thing? aug: su: Web services Application service providers Computer network protocols International Business Machines Corp. Microsoft Corp. Computer service industry Standards XML (Extensible Markup Language) Simple Object Access Protocol (Computer network protocol) Variable costs Contracting out Internet industry World Wide Web Merrick, Phillip WebMethods Inc. sug: subj: Web services Application service providers Computer network protocols International Business Machines Corp. Microsoft Corp. Computer service industry Standards XML (Extensible Markup Language) Simple Object Access Protocol (Computer network protocol) Variable costs Contracting out Internet industry World Wide Web Merrick, Phillip WebMethods Inc. ab: The article discusses the potential for a computing infrastructure using supply systems. Firms will outsource their computing to specialists (IBM, HP, etc) and pay for it as they use it, just as they now pay for their electricity, gas and water. This vision will rely on two unglamorous technologies. The first is "web services"--software that resides in a big shared "server" computer and can be found and used by applications on other servers, even ones far away and belonging to different organisations. The second technology is "grid computing". This involves the sharing of processing power. Both technologies have made great strides recently. Web services, for instance, need common standards and protocols. Some basic standards already exist--awkward acronyms such as XML, SOAP and WSDL provide a rudimentary grammar to let computers talk to each other. But the sticking point, says Phillip Merrick, boss of webMethods, one of the pioneers in the field, has been the many other fiddly but necessary protocols for security, transaction certification, and so on. A breakthrough occurred in October, when the two superpowers, IBM and Microsoft, simply got up on a stage together and declared what protocols they will use. Dubbed "WS splat" by the geeks, this ought to speed up the adoption of web services. Web services are currently most visible in the business model of so-called application service providers. These are firms that offer to host software applications and databases for customers for a monthly fee. At the core of the vision is flexibility--a firm must be able to make its operating costs, and therefore its computing and information costs, totally variable so that they go up and down with business volumes. For computing to be bought and sold as a utility, firms must be able to switch vendors, to do it for all their computing functions, and with meter-based pricing. All of this will take a few more years to get right. pubtype: Periodical doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2004 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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