Thousands of customers are using Web services to transform their operations, proving the technology has moved beyond the hype and is delivering real business value, says Michael Liebow, vice president, Web services, IBM Global Services. IBM Business Consulting Services runs Web Services Centers of Excellence to help customers create Web services solutions. Miami Dade County enterprise technology services assistant director Ira S. Feuer says Web services has enabled the county to rapidly create new uses of legacy data. Miami Dade's new 3-1-1 informational phone line will access data about government services via Web services technology, for example, and police, fire, and emergency workers also have access to critical data wirelessly. County building inspectors similarly are linked to back-end systems via Web services, making them more efficient. Feuer says Web services provides a cost-efficient and flexible framework for new applications, and is helping Miami Dade become a true e-government. Blue Cross of Arkansas is also using Web services to make things more efficient, directly connecting with care provider's systems for automatic transaction processing. The deployment has reduced Blue Cross of Arkansas' dependence on third-party clearing houses and costly manual processes, and has already taken care of $15 million worth of transactions in just a few months. Independent brokerage Wall Street Access is another IBM Web services customer applying Web services to improve its business functions. Through Web services links, Wall Street Access is able to connect its customers more quickly to information and trades happening on nearly 20 exchanges and to other important market and specialist groups. In conjunction with customers, IBM has built prototype Web services for specific industries, such as the recent Branch Transformation in Banking and Model for e-Government Transformation in Government frameworks. Copyright 2003 INFORMATION, INC. Full story in Web Services Journal, 17 November 2003 (may require a subscription |
