Web Services Or Rice Pudding, As Long As It WorksWeb Services Or Rice Pudding, As Long As It Works

George Muller, CIO for Imperial Sugar Co., doesn't care how technology is marketed. So when SilverStream Software Inc. pitched Web services as the technology of choice to build an extranet for the $1.8 billion marketer of refined sugar, Muller asked the basics: Will the software work well and meet Imperial Sugar's needs?

The answer? "Call it Web services or call it rice pudding--they were able to do what we wanted to do in a short period of time and in an economical way," Muller says. "And we were able to train our IT staff in these tools so they could march down the field and get the job done."

Founded in 1843 in Sugar Land, Texas, Imperial Sugar is using a new version of SilverStream's application integration server, available this week, that supports emerging Web-services technologies, including Simple Object Access Protocol; Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration; and Web Services Description Language. Web services could simplify application integration, a complex problem for many companies.

Imperial Sugar is using SilverStream's eXtend Composer integration server so customers can use its extranet to make XML-based requests and receive XML responses from the company's two highly customized order-management systems, one running on an IBM OS/390 and the other on an IBM AS/400.

Launched in June, Imperial Sugar's extranet lets customers access order information, such as delivery times. Only about five of Imperial's largest customers--out of 10,000 customers total--use the system, but the company hopes to have most online in 12 to 18 months. Because customers are used to doing business with Imperial through fax, telephone, or electronic data interchange, convincing them to use the Web will take time, Muller says. "Changing that culture takes an adjustment that's definitely a paradigm shift, and that just takes time." By year's end, Imperial also plans to offer customers the ability to enter orders directly into the system.

Though Imperial Sugar's implementation doesn't leverage any of the Web-services standards, SilverStream executives describe the interaction between mainframe applications as a Web service because it leverages XML. Pricing for the SilverStream eXtend product suite starts at $100,000.

SilverStream competitor Iona Technologies plc this week is debuting a new version of its application and integration server that supports Web-services technologies. Iona's Orbix E2A e-Business Platform will ship in December, with pricing starting at $500 per development license and $2,500 per deployment license.