1 of 20 The Strategic Importance of Web Services EDUCAUSE Conference November 5, 2003 Richard Spencer, Executive Director, e-Business Ted Dodds, CIO University of British Columbia Copyright Spencer/Dodds, This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

2 of 20 Key Themes  Aligning technology with institutional goals  Keeping an end user point of view  Open standards  Web services in practice  Systems thinking

3 of 20 Aligning IT initiatives A university’s key goals:  learning and development  scholarship and discovery of knowledge  transmission of knowledge  community engagement people are a university’s most important resource

4 of 20 People  Faculty and students need –less time on administration, and better service –technology that enables research and learning –opportunities to be more productive  Staff need –shared information and knowledge  improved processes (Web self-service)  access to multiple systems (Web services) –more time for value added work

5 of 20 UBC’s e-Strategy a guiding framework to align UBC’s technology initiatives with the University’s strategic goals

6 of 20 Web services “Any piece of software that makes itself available over the Internet and uses a standard XML messaging system” “Improve end-user productivity and convenience by tying together heterogeneous systems so that application silos disappear while underlying processes and data become visible”

7 of 34 Portal Framework  Business process view, not application silo view  Publish and subscribe, not static content  Integrate, personalize and customize, not transaction-centric FinanceH/R Student Admin WebCT Courses Back Office Web Access MyUBC Portal End User Perspective (circa 2001)

8 of 20 Finance H/R Student Admin Student Admin WebCT Legacy Silos Portal – Single Sign-on Personalized Access Web Services Customer Facing Utility … …

9 of 20 What others have said  About standards, not about infinite choice (Walsh, 2002)  Seductive but fuzzy, the next evolutionary step (Oblinger, 2002)  Most promising aspect is ability to resolve differences among shared networked applications (Jacobson, 2002)  The capabilities of Web Services will expand and a new generation of service applications will emerge –designed and built by business integrators, not programmers. (Gleason, 2002)

10 of 20 Mainstream will find XML/SOAP-based solutions to be more appealing and do not need services registry (UDDI). (Gartner, 2003)

11 of 20 Separating Presentation and Data  HTML –Web page as a single aggregated data entity –Focus is on presentation  XML –Identify data elements and types in a web environment –Focus is on data  Tuition amount  Learning object  Journal citations

12 of 20 The standards DataXML ValidationSchema TransportSOAP (real-time) SMTP (batch) SecuritySAML Discovery/DescriptionWSDL DirectoryUDDI PortletJSR 168 TransformationXSLT Source: Jim Farmer, Japan Education and Research Conference, Nov. 2002

13 of 20 System silos  ERP systems –Finance –Human Resources  Other systems –Student admin –Course management –Continuing studies –Library –Residence and conferences –Food services –Advancement –Land and building management, etc. –Parking  our systems reflect our paper based organizational structure –filing cabinets –separate departments –compliant customers  different, incompatible technologies  lack of networks  no demand for real-time service

14 of 20 A shift in perspective From An application A function My department To A person A process The integration of functions My customer My institution Systems Thinking

15 of 20 Systems thinking  work on small pieces  only build each piece once  tie the pieces together  keep the pieces aligned with the vision  only store information once  let customers enter and update information  align service delivery toward the customer

16 of 20 Consolidated billing Student Service Centre Consolidated billing Admission fees Tuition fees Residence fees Meal plan credit card auth Accounting EFT from bank EFT to student a/c

17 of 20 UBC CV – Overview and Demo Granting Agency (NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR) Use Common CV Researcher Populate personal activities from external data sources Enter data once or never Retain control Construct multiple views Store granting council data remotely Store UBC data locally

18 of 20 Observations  Well-suited to academic environment –Loose coupling  Decentralization  Enabled by power of open standards –XML is license free  Publishing and discovering –Control rests with end user  Effective between or within institutions –Personal agreement within institution

19 of 20 Evolution on campus  Build a community to support the model –May be more successful if left informal at first –Could be built around a single important service  Establish trust –Iterative dialogue between clients and builders  Develop governance –To formalize “how we do things”

20 of 20 Thanks for listening! Questions?

21 of 20

22 of 20 Faculty and students need:  more time –fewer administrative tasks –less time spent on remaining tasks  technology that enables research and learning  better service and support opportunities to be more productive

23 of 20 Staff need:  more time to focus on customers  shared information and knowledge  tools to support customer service  we need: –improved processes (Web self-service) –access to multiple systems (Web services) more time for value added work

24 of 20 Web services “any piece of software that makes itself available over the Internet and uses a standard XML messaging system”  include: –a means of locating the service (UDDI) –a public interface, defined in an XML grammar (WSDL)  use: –XML & SOAP for messaging –http and tcp/ip for communication

25 of 20 Web services light  description and discovery off line  trust between services established off line  services communicate behind the firewall  users agree on standard APIs  XML messaging, SOAP  http and tcp/ip end-user services can loosely couple systems common services can link systems