HP Casts A Wide NetHP Casts A Wide Net

Hewlett-Packard was the first major systems vendor to plant a seed in the ground for Web services. Now, after a three-year incubation period, that seed is starting to germinate.

"HP has the potential to offer the best vertically integrated solution in 2002--from servers and storage to Web-services tools and applications," says Martin Marshall, managing director of Zona Research.

HP's notion of service-centric computing is built on the idea that all software will eventually be available as a service, whether IT staffers write it, it's downloaded over the Internet from a commercial developer, or it's available as a business service via a Web portal. HP's vision isn't unique, but if you believe the company lore, it's been thinking about it the longest--20 years ago, the then-head of HP Labs, Joel Birnbaum, put forth the idea of the information utility.

HP's service-centric computing model means that all computing assets are delivered over networks, says HP CEO Carly Fiorina. This requires a network infrastructure that is highly available, secure, manageable, and pervasive. "This is a major computing trend that will evolve over the next two to three decades," Fiorina says.

Most enterprise applications aren't designed to work over the Internet; that's one reason application service providers have had such a tough time attracting customers.

But IT departments already are starting to operate more like utilities, says Rick Hayes-Roth, chief technical officer of HP's software division. To do that, these service-provider IT departments need to create flexible applications that use commodity hardware so their businesses can bring new products and services to market more quickly, and at a lower cost and higher quality than has been possible in the past, he says.

As a case in point, the Ontario Justice Ministries has implemented a service supply chain between outsourcer EDS Canada and its internal help desks by using HP's Total e-Server and Web-application services. As the government agency responsible for the province's police, court, and correctional services, it needed to make sure that it could integrate its help-desk applications and databases with those of EDS, which provide the Justice Ministries' WAN infrastructure.

The Justice Ministries are comprised of eight sections, each with its own CIO and IT units. With the help of Collective Minds, a North Bay, Ontario, systems integrator, 10 help desks were integrated with EDS's Remedy-based help desk. By implementing this integration as a Web service, the Justice Ministries got a flexible, heterogeneous system that could be expanded to encompass other service providers in the support chain, says Michael Campigotto, Collective Minds' president.

HP's Web-services platform goes beyond Total e-Server. The application server is one component of HP's Netaction Internet operating environment. Netaction is the foundation of a utility approach in which the computing infrastructure is always on and universally accessible from any type of device.

The platform is composed of various software components needed to build next-generation applications and Web services. Its goal is to help corporate and commercial developers build, integrate, and deploy Web services using industry standards such as XML and Java.

Netaction is tightly integrated with HP's OpenView management platform that monitors networks, hardware, software, transactions, and distributed Web applications. Integration between the development and management platforms is essential for Web services, says Jean-Christophe Cimetiere, CEO of consulting firm TechMetrix Research. HP's Hayes-Roth concurs, noting that Web services without a strong management underpinning is just a pipe dream.

Four key facilities are needed to develop Web services, says Cimetiere: an XML factory to handle data transformations; listener technology that receives incoming application requests and passes them on to the appropriate processes; a management infrastructure to control and maintain Web operations; and a security framework.

HP offers products in each of these categories, from the Total e-Server application server that supports Java and XML development and includes listener technology, to the OpenView management platform, and various security applications.

HP also emphasizes mobility with the Total e-Mobile server that makes content available to mobile devices; the Chai Appliance Platform for creating applications and services for Web appliances; and the Opencall development platform that lets Internet service providers and mobile carriers create Web services.

Straddling the worlds of commercial and open-source software, HP last month released a free alternative to Total e-Server, the HP Internet Server. This entry-level application server will let ISPs quickly and easily build Web services using Java and HTTP. It's designed to be embedded in new and existing applications. While HP won't make any money from this server, there's a possibility that developers can be enticed to buy add-on products and services, Zona Research's Marshall says. The product competes with a similar commercial offering from BEA Systems Inc.

The Internet Server is the first product to implement HP's Core Services Framework--a road map of how services should behave and interact with other services. The core services are a reference implementation of HP's Java Services Framework specification, designed to make software reuse easy. Software reuse is at the heart of Web services and the framework hopefully will do what object-oriented programming and component models before it have failed to do.

The Java Services Framework uses open standards as a starting point but goes beyond that by outlining well-defined contracts that should ensure that application components or services can be accessed and managed consistently.

The framework also defines how services interact with each other and the framework itself. It also makes use of management software to enable developers to dynamically configure, maintain, and deploy services throughout a system's life cycle. Finally, the framework outlines how services or components make use of common infrastructure such as security.

While HP is assembling many of the needed pieces to make Web services a reality, it's feeling the pressure to deliver on its promises. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems are vying for mindshare and market share in the Web-services arena. Vendors will compete on technology, but, ultimately, the result will depend on whether these solutions make it easier and less costly for IT departments to manage the application life cycle.

For now, vendors are working to assemble the needed technology pieces. "Web services are a bit like Disney World," says Zona Research's Marshall. "There are always going to be parts that are under construction."